Italy and Libya are ready to “reactivate” their treaty of friendship, Prime Minister Mario Monti said Thursday after a meeting with the head of Libya’s National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil. Abdel Jalil was in Rome to discuss the 2008 treaty of friendship between Libya and its former colonial power Italy, which was signed by the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi and former premier Silvio Berlusconi.
The treaty saw Italian companies granted billions of euros in contracts in exchange for $5 billion in compensation for colonial rule, to be paid over 25 years. It also included construction of around 1,700 kilometres of motorway coastline in Libya at a cost of $3 billion, and allowed Italy to send back immigrants reaching its shores from Libya. Monti reiterated Rome’s willingness to “unblock as soon as possible frozen Libyan funds” in Italy.
“Italy has already unblocked 600 million euros”, he said, adding that a part of that sum could be used to reimburse Libyan debt owed to Italian businesses.
