Large Arab boycott of Libya conference as Italy's FM visits Egypt
On the sidelines of a heavily boycotted Arab League consultative meeting, Egyptian officials met Italy's foreign minister to discuss illegal immigration from Libya, among other issues.
17 out of 22 member states of the Arab League abstained from sending their foreign minister to a consultative meeting on Libya on Sunday, marking regional ambivalence over the Abdel Hamid Dbeibah’s government.
Only five Arab countries attended the meeting including the foreign ministers of neighboring Algeria and Tunisia. Egypt boycotted so did Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, local media reported.
Cairo's boycott came as Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met on Sunday with his Italian counterpart, Antonio Tajani, in Cairo.
They discussed two cases that have made the world headlines: Giulio Regeni, the Italian graduate student who was tortured to death in Cairo in 2006, and Patrick George Zaki, an Egyptian student in Bologna who had been detained by the Egyptian authorities for almost two years. Although Zaki was released from detention pending trial in December 2021, he is unable to travel.
