ROME: Italy will push for greater US involvement in fostering stability in Libya when President Donald Trump and other world leaders meet in May, Italy’s deputy foreign minister said.
Italy hosts the annual meeting of seven of the world’s biggest industrialized economies (G7) in the town of Taormina in Sicily on May 26-27. It will be Trump’s first scheduled trip to Europe.
Speaking in his office, Deputy Foreign Minister Mario Giro said that one of Italy’s foreign policy priorities was to build international support to unify Libya.
People-smugglers based in the strife-torn country, where two rival governments compete with armed militias for power, have sent hundreds of thousands of migrants on boats toward Italy since 2013. Arrivals have surged more than 50 percent this year.
“In recent years, Libya has always been a priority of ours,” Giro said.
“We hope — and at the G7 we will say it — that this issue interests also the US.”
As well as Italy and the US, the G7 comprises Britain, France, Canada, Japan and Germany.
Libya split into a patchwork of rival fiefdoms after a NATO-backed uprising led to the overthrow of Muammer Qaddafi in 2011.
Russia appears to be backing powerful commander Khalifa Haftar, who is aligned with a government based in the eastern city of Bayda.
Italy wants US to do more to foster stability in Libya
Italy wants US to do more to foster stability in Libya
Syria accuses Hezbollah of firing shells into its territory
- “The Syrian Arab Army will not tolerate any aggression targeting Syria,” the army said in a statement to SANA
DAMASCUS: Syria said Iran-backed Hezbollah had fired artillery shells into its territory from Lebanon overnight, state media reported on Tuesday, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Lebanese Shia movement.
Syrian army officials said artillery shells fired from Lebanon landed near the town of Serghaya, west of Damascus, the state news agency SANA reported on Tuesday.
The army accused Hezbollah of targeting Syrian army positions, telling the news agency it observed Hezbollah reinforcements at the Syrian-Lebanese border.
“The Syrian Arab Army will not tolerate any aggression targeting Syria,” the army said in a statement to SANA.
Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war last week when Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during US-Israeli strikes.
Hezbollah and Israeli forces have clashed in eastern Lebanon in recent days, and Israel has carried out strikes across Lebanon, including on the capital Beirut.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun accused Hezbollah of working to “collapse” the state, while the head of the group’s parliamentary bloc said it had “no other option... than the option of resistance.”
Hezbollah provided military support to former Syrian president Bashar Assad, who was overthrown in December 2024 by an Islamist coalition hostile to the pro-Iranian Shia movement.
Since then, its supply routes from Syria have been cut off, and Lebanese and Syrian authorities are trying to combat smuggling across the porous border between the two countries.
