Oct 25 (Reuters) – Libya’s foreign ministry summoned the US chargé d’affaires on Sunday to protest against rally statements by President Donald Trump it described as “offensive”, after he called the North African nation “terror-infested”.
• The ministry said it rejected any statements that “undermine the dignity of its people or diminish their standing”
• At Saturday’s rally in Perry, Georgia, Trump said, “(US Senator) Jon Ossoff personally sponsored a bill to bring armies of migrants from terror-infested countries like Libya, Yemen, Haiti, Somalia. Remember what I called them? Shithouse countries,” in a reference to remarks made during his first term
• The US was committed to ties with Libya, Trump said on Truth Social on Sunday night, calling its people “proud, resilient, hospitable, and deserving of peace and prosperity”
• “We respect the Libyan people and the sacrifices that brave Libyans made fighting ISIS, the common enemy of both our peoples, but Libya cannot remain a corridor for illegal migration, and this must end now,” he wrote
• Libya’s rival administrations in the east and west denounced Trump’s remarks, rejecting attempts to draw Libya into what they called “electoral debates”
(Reporting by Menna Alaa El-Din, Ahmed Elumami, Bhargav Acharya and Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Ros Russell and Clarence Fernandez)
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