The European Union’s delayed naval mission to enforce an arms embargo on Libya will be ready to begin work in the coming days, officials stated on Wednesday.
EU states agreed on Monday to equip the new operation with ships, planes and satellites, a spokesman for the bloc’s diplomatic chief told AFP.
Operation Irini, as the mission is known, aims to halt the flow of arms into Libya, where the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) is under attack from the forces of warlord Khalifa Haftar, who controls much of the south and east.
An Italian naval ship will reach the zone of operations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the coming days, a diplomatic source told AFP, supported initially by ships from other EU nations in the area until the arrival of vessels formally attached to the Irini mission arrive.
Irini will also monitor and gather information on illicit exports from Libya of petroleum, crude oil and refined petroleum products, contribute to the capacity building and training of the Libyan coast guard and navy in law enforcement tasks at sea and contribute to the disruption of the business model of human smuggling and trafficking networks through information gathering and patrolling by planes.
Irini replaces the controversial Operation Sophia, set up in 2015 to fight human smuggling across the Mediterranean at the height of Europe’s migrant crisis, which formally ended at the end of March.
The new mission was supposed to start immediately, but it was held up for nearly a month by bickering between Italy and Greece over who should hold the command.
Agreement over Irini has been hard-fought. The 27 EU states finally reached an accord in principle in February, overcoming objections from Austria and Hungary, who feared the new mission would in effect create a rescue fleet that would ferry migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe.
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