Germany calls for UN sanctions for countries breaking Libya arms embargo
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German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the UN should pass a resolution sanctioning any country that breaks the arms embargo on Libya.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas made this point when he met EU High Representative Josep Borrell in Berlin.
“No one thought there would be a quick solution,” Maas told reporters in the ensuing press conference, after reports emerged over the weekend that the embargo agreed during the Berlin conference earlier in January was already failing.
The UN Security Council should agree that “this would not remain without consequences,” Maas said. “All of us who sat at the table in Berlin and agreed the conclusions will take responsibility for that.”
The ongoing instability has exacerbated the migration crisis, and the 72-year-old Spanish diplomat Borrell, not afraid of an undiplomatic turn of phrase, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung on Sunday, “Libya is a cancer whose metastases are spreading into the whole region.”
Maas is hoping that the 5+5 committee, with representatives from the Libyan conflict parties, will meet this week to discuss the possibility of a UN-brokered truce.
