Former Libyan FM insists August 2023 meet with Israeli counterpart Eli Cohen was OK’d by Tripoli

Libyan Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush speaks during a press conference with her Turkish counterpart at Turkey's foreign ministry in Ankara, February 13, 2023. (Adem Altan/AFP)
Libyan Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush speaks during a press conference with her Turkish counterpart at Turkey's foreign ministry in Ankara, February 13, 2023. (Adem Altan/AFP)

Former Libyan foreign minister Najla Mangoush insists that an August 2023 meeting she held with her Israeli counterpart at the time, Eli Cohen, had been greenlit by Tripoli.

Mangoush was fired and fled the country after Cohen announced that the two had met.

In her first comments since the debacle, Mangoush says that the conversation had taken place on the sidelines of a wider summit and that it was not an official meeting.

“It was a secret meeting,” she says on Al Jazeera’s Atheer podcast. “The meeting doesn’t mean normalization (with Israel).”

She says that Libya’s Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh had tasked her with holding the meeting.

Anti-government demonstrations erupted in Tripoli last week, following the broadcast of the podcast interview, with protesters accusing Dbeibeh of collaborating with Israel.

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