Gaddafi Prioritizes Energy Contracts with Russia Over Arms Deals

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi emphasized on Saturday that he wants to strengthen energy cooperation with Russia and has prioritized energy contracts over arms sales, which have so far constituted the core of the exchange between the two countries, agencies report.

Russia, along with Europe and the United States, has entered the race to conclude agreements with Libya, which has once again become attractive to investors since emerging from international isolation after abandoning its weapons of mass destruction program.

“Unfortunately, in the past, our relations have mainly focused on military and diplomatic ties, and there has literally been no cooperation in the civil sectors,” Gaddafi said in the Kremlin during talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The Libyan leader arrived in Russia on Friday for a three-day visit, hoping to negotiate arms sales to Libya and, since April, when former President Vladimir Putin visited Tripoli, aims to refresh the once good Soviet-Libyan relations.

“Libya and Russia are major producers of oil and gas,” Gaddafi said, who visited Russia for the first time since 1985.

The Russian energy giant Gazprom signed a temporary agreement with the Libyan National Oil Corporation for a joint venture and announced that it wants to participate in the construction of a new gas pipeline from the Mediterranean through Libya to Europe. Libya is the largest oil producer in Africa and is estimated to be the fourth in the world in gas reserves, which are relatively underexploited, but Libya is preparing to become a larger gas producer. The dpa agency reminds that Moscow agreed in April to write off Libya’s debt of $4.6 billion in exchange for business contracts for the construction of roads, housing, and other infrastructure projects.

The Russian railway company RZD is negotiating the construction of 554 kilometers of railway in Libya, a project worth about $2.3 billion. The Russian newspaper Vedomosti reports that the two countries are expected to sign an agreement for the supply of Russian weapons worth over $1.5 billion, including SU-30 fighter jets, T-90 tanks, and more. The sophisticated Russian missile system Tor-M2E is expected to seal the agreement for the establishment of a Russian naval base in Benghazi for the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean, agencies report, adding that neither Medvedev nor Gaddafi mentioned this issue at a press conference on Saturday.

AFP reports that Russian companies want to participate in the exploitation of Libyan energy deposits, while Libya aims to engage in the exploitation of Russian gas deposits, citing the Russian newspaper Kommersant, which states that this Libyan initiative “was not received with enthusiasm” in Moscow. The same newspaper reminds that Libya did not welcome the Russian-Iranian initiative to establish a “Gas OPEC,” an organization of gas-producing countries, modeled after OPEC (oil producers), and that Moscow did not like such distancing.