Civil society organizations in Fezzan called on the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs to stop the Italian Ara Pacis NGO and to verify and follow up on its activities in all regions and cities of Libya, calling on the Presidential Council to correct the status of the Civil Society Commission, adding in a statement regarding the Italian Ara Pacis organization's initiative to integrate illegal immigrants in the southern region, that they were surprised by a meeting of a group of mayors and officials of agriculture in the municipalities of the south with Ara Pacis NGO's members in the Italian city of Bari, with the aim of settling illegal immigrants in south Libya.
They also rejected what came in the statement of the meeting that was held on April 13, which stated that the project that the Italian organization will work on in the south "aims to contribute to social integration of the local population and illegal immigrant communities in the region."
The Libyan civil society organizations held the Italian government responsible for such calls, warning that the issue will constitute a great danger to Italy's interests in Libya.
A number of mayors of the southern region who attended the Bari meeting announced later that they did not sign any agreement, nor did they sign the final statement of the meeting, which called for the integration of African immigrants in southern Libya.
The mayors of Sabha and Ghat announced their explicit rejection of the idea of settling immigrants in southern Libya, stressing that they had informed the Italian side that any agreement of this kind must be concluded with the state represented by the Ministry of Local Government and not with the municipalities directly.
