The foreign minister of Libya’s Western-backed unity government is urging European nations to find solutions to the refugee crisis other than pushing migrants to countries outside the EU.
Libya is embroiled in factional violence that excludes it from any EU list of “safe countries” for migrant returns.
But other North African countries have reached agreement with the EU to receive rejected asylum-seekers.
Mohammed Taher Siyala criticised any attempts to “export responsibilities and burdens … as a result of illegal migration by dumping them on our shoulders and other countries”.
The influx to Europe via Turkey across the Aegean to Greece has slowed because of the EU-Turkey migrant returns agreement, while increasing from Libya to Italy.
Siyala was speaking Thursday at a Vienna conference on migration and extremism.
