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Labour will assess building asylum centres in Libya

Labor Party Party leader Jonas Gahr Støre asylum centresLabor Party Party leader Jonas Gahr Støre.Photo: Jon Olav Nesvold / NTB scanpix

Arbeiderpartiet (The Labour Party – Ap)  will assess building asylum centres in Libya

France’s president is to establish asylum centres in Libya, an idea Fremskrittspartiet (Frp) veteran, Carl I. Hagen, proposed in 2001. Now Ap will consider the same course of action.

 

One month ago, Ap’s immigration spokesperson, Stein Eirik Lauvås characterised the proposal to establish asylum reception centres in Libya as being ‘completely useless’.
Now, Ap has changed tack and is opening the way to review the proposal. Party leader, Jonas Gahr Støre, in reference to Lauvås’ latest statement to ABC News, said that the party will consider ‘any serious proposal’ that could solve the crisis.

‘We must put an end to the cynical smuggling of human beings across the Mediterranean. It’s a crisis that’s continued for too long, in which people lose their lives’, said Lauvås, emphasising that there must be common European cooperation.

On Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France will establish asylum centres in Libya this summer. To check the problem of asylum seekers and migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.

However, on Friday it became apparent that the plan would have to be postponed due to the security situation in the country.

The measure is similar to the idea that Frp announced, in June, that they will carry out if the party retains government after the parliamentary elections on September 11th.

Old idea

In 2001, former Frp chairman, Carl I. Hagen, suggested establishing asylum reception centres in Africa. The party’s sustainability committee announced in 2013 that Norway should establish asylum centres in both Africa and Asia, it was reported in newspapers.

Høyres immigration policy spokesperson, Ingjerd Schou, said that for the time being, the party wouldn’t support such a solution.

‘This course of action contains too many unanswered questions for us to put ourselves behind it now. Among other things, it demands

Norway to be responsible for such reception centres on another continent, and at the same time to be responsible for security, health, and humanitarian matters,’ Schou told NTB news.

 

© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today