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(Bloomberg) -- The European Union is focused on maintaining stability in Iraq as shock-waves from the killing of Irans top general in Baghdad this month reverberate around the Middle East.

Iraq is our most important concern today, Josep Borrell, the EUs foreign policy chief, said in a press conference after an emergency meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels on Friday.

With the Iran nuclear accord unraveling and Europes influence in Libya fading, Iraq is one place EU leaders are trying to make a difference. If instability were to spread through Iraq, that could lead to another wave of refugees stoking anti-migrant sentiment in Europe and create the conditions for Islamic State to rise again.

We have to avoid the spiral of violence that can create a situation in Iraq that can be very dangerous and destroy years of efforts and work on rebuilding this country, he said.

Though both Washington and Tehran have stepped back from the brink since retaliatory Iranian missile strikes on a U.S. airbase in Iraq avoided military casualties, the situation remains volatile. Borrell said ministers gave him a strong mandate to work on a political regional solution.

Most ministers were aware that Iran is not the only country stirring up trouble in the region, according to one diplomat who was in the room. With Saudi Arabia and Qatar also playing dirty, ministers concluded that picking a winner and a loser is not going to work, he said.

The meeting saw the ministers divided into two camps, the diplomat added. The U.K. and Poland led calls for European nations to follow the U.S. and pull out of the nuclear deal. Frances argument that the EU still needs to engage with Iran won more support though while Germany was caught between in the middle.

Libya is another source of acute concern that was discussed.

Earlier this week, military commander Khalifa Haftar captured Sirte, a strategic city on the coast that could help advance his 10-month offensive against the internationally-recognized government in Tripoli.

Nuclear Accord

Europes traditional influence in the North African oil producer has been eclipsed by the arrival of other players -- chiefly Russia and Turkey -- with forces on the ground leaving them better placed to contain or escalate the countrys conflict.

Recent developments show that the crisis may spiral out of control and today we wanted to send a strong signal of unity, Borrell said.

Borrell insisted the EU remains committed to salvaging the 2015 nuclear deal, perhaps in the hope that the U.S. election in 10 months time will bring a shift in the White Houses attitude.

The U.K. and other European signatories to the accord may have vowed to protect it from the fallout of Soleimanis death but theyll come under renewed pressure to reconsider that position if Iran shows its aiming to substantially step up its nuclear enrichment.

Tehran has been slowly discarding the accords limitations on its enrichment of uranium since President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the pact in 2018, demanding tougher curbs on Iran. Earlier on Friday, in an interview with RTL radio, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said if the deal continues to fray, Iran could get atomic weapons within a year or two.

Without the accord, the Islamic Republic would already be a nuclear state, Borrell said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ian Wishart in Brussels at iwishart@bloomberg.net;Caroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Viktoria Dendrinou

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

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Europe Aims to Shore Up Iraq With Iran and Libya Out of Reach - Yahoo Finance

Rabat Moroccos Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Bourita has shared Moroccos official position in the recent developments in the Libyan crisis.

The minister commented on the Libyan issue at a press conference held on Tuesday, January 7, in Dakhla at the opening of the Gambian general consulate.

The official said that Morocco is expressing its deep concern about the military deployment in Libya, strongly rejecting any foreign interference.

For Morocco, domestic affairs are sacred and countrys diplomacy should stand by the principle of non-interference to avoid issues and conflicts.

The Kingdom of Morocco rejects any foreign interference, including military intervention in the Libyan case, Bourita argued.

The comments came just five days after Turkish parliament approved military deployment to Libya, a situation seen as a serious escalation by international powers, including the US, and Saudi Arabia.

Foreign interventions have only complicated the situation in Libya, removed the potential for a political solution in the country, create internal differences and threatened peace and security in the entire Maghreb, Moroccos FM argued.

For the Moroccan government, political conflicts should be solved based on a political solution.

There is no military solution to the conflict in Libya. The solution to the conflict can only be political, and lies in the agreement between the Libyan parties, within the framework of the supreme interest of Libya and the Libyan people, Bourita added.

The Moroccan official emphasized the importance of finding a solution to the conflict instead of making the crisis in Libya a political commercial asset.

Libya cannot become a political commercial asset that serves diplomatic conferences and meetings instead of serving the vital need of the Libyan people in peace and security, Bourita concluded.

Ghassan Salam, head of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) also condemned military intervention in the country at a press briefing in New York on Monday, January 6, following a closed-door meeting of the Security Council.

He called for other countries to take your hands out of Libya, a country that is suffering from increasing foreign interference in the long-running factional conflict that has left the country in crisis since the fall of Muammar Gadaffi in 2011.

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Morocco Condemns Military Interference in Libya - Morocco World News

A financial institution responsible for a huge write-down in the value of Libyan frozen assets held in the UK remains under investigation after it failed to raise the alarm over a multi-million-pound accounting error, the UK government has revealed.

Officials have refused to identify the institution they have been investigating for at least three months after being forced to revise the amount held by UK companies downwards by up to 840 million to 11.2 billion.

The unidentified bank sent in the wrong figures for a 2017/18 government report and failed to report the discrepancy when it sent in drastically lower figures for the next annual review. The mistake was only picked up in 2019, according to a government statement in parliament this week.

The mistake represented a seven per cent cut in the 12 billion previously identified by the government to have frozen in Britain for the future benefit of the Libyan people.

OFSI identified an inconsistent figure relating to Libyan frozen funds . and contacted the institution for an explanation of the figure, according to a government statement in response to questions from veteran Northern Irish politician Reg Empey.

The financial institution stated that an incorrect figure had been submitted in the previous year as part of its submission, the statement said. There is currently no evidence to suggest that frozen funds have been depleted or moved.

Mr Empey has campaigned for frozen funds to be used to compensate families of victims of Libyan-backed Irish terrorism and criticised the UK governments failure to follow the lead of countries including France, Germany and the USA.

He had previously told the Belfast News Letter that the write-down was a massive amount and added: Given the governments handling of this issue over a 20-year period, they cannot expect people to react with anything other than scepticism.

Victims of terrorist attacks during the 30-year conflict known as The Troubles this week launched a fresh attempt to sue Libya for supplying the Irish Republican Army with plastic explosives during Muammar Qaddafis time in power.

The UK Treasury, which has oversight of the body that monitors UK sanctions, declined to say how long it had been investigating the institution involved in the accounting error. It said it could not be named for legal reasons.

The frozen funds are under the control, either directly or indirectly, of the Tripoli-headquartered Libyan Investment Authority (LIA). It is believed to have $67bn (Dh246bn) of frozen assets worldwide held by institutions including HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Nomura and Societe General, leaked documents from 2011 showed.

Updated: January 10, 2020 10:14 PM

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Bank failed to raise alarm over huge write-down of frozen Libyan assets - The National

Islamists in Turkey and the Arab-Muslim world have had a hard time accepting the end of the Muslim caliphate ever since the proclamation of the secular Turkish Republic, in October 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on the rubble of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the caliphate in March 1924.

Since then, pan-Islamic movements, particularly in Egypt and on the Indian subcontinent, never missed an opportunity to denounce this historic betrayal. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 by Egyptian Hassan al-Banna, although later banned by King Farouk, was the most virulent critic of the civil state and the most ardent advocate of a return to the caliphate in the land of Islam, even though no reference to the caliphate was made in the Quranto consecrate it as the type of regime for a Muslim rule.

Since 2002, Turkish Islamists, led by now-President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, repeated that Ataturks republican and secular legacy would not be abandoned in Turkey. Their words sounded more like the old Islamist takiyya strategy -- in concealing real intent for the sake of a "higher purpose."

In this case, the Brotherhood was striving to secure a grip on power. In Turkey, the "higher purpose" being sought was reflected inErdogans and the Islamists efforts to simply erode Ataturks legacy, especially regarding the separation of state and religion and in the rampant Islamisation of educational content in Turkish schools.

In 2018, a presidential regime was established in Turkey and Erdogan started behaving like the new Ottoman sultan. Barely voted in as president, he declared: The Republic of Turkey, like our previous states which are a continuation of each other, is also a continuation of the Ottomans.

Of course, the borders have changed; the forms of government have changed... but the essence is the same, the soul is the same, even many institutions are the same, he added.

Among those institutions inspired by the Ottoman Empire, Erdogan has resurrected, in a new incarnation, the concept of janissaries, made during the days of the empire of European slaves and prisoners of war, a sort of praetorian guard of the Ottoman dynasty.

This military body, known for its cruelty, had become a threat to the regime it was supposed to protect. Sultan Mahmoud II abolished the military corps in 1826, liquidating 7,000 janissaries in Istanbul and 120,000 in the rest of the empire.

Despite the massacre, the recourse by the Ottomans to the services of mercenaries and agents to do the empires dirty work remained a tradition among the sultans and later among Turkish nationalists. From 1894-96, the agents of the Turkish state were used against the minorities of the empire. In response to the Armenians' demands for reform and modernisation of the institutions, Sultan Abdul-Hamid II killed 200,000-250,000 of them with the help of Kurdish auxiliaries.

In turn, the latter would be much later repressed, massacred and their cultural identity erased.

Modern Turkish nationalists (aka the Young Turks) were not to be outdone. They perpetuated the tradition of Ottoman genocides and ethnic cleansing against the Armenians, the Assyro-Chaldeans or Pontics (Greek Orthodox of the province of Pont on the Black Sea) and Greek minorities.

With the war against Syria in 2011, Erdogan, relying on Qatari money, used the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to try to destroy the Syrian state, which was too secular for his taste, and Islamists in Libya to bring down the few things that resembled state institutions under Muammar Qaddafi.

In the Turkish-occupied areas of Syria -- Idlib and Aleppo regions and the north-east border area -- Erdogan uses the Brotherhood and Islamist brigades as well as Turkish-speaking ethnic minorities (Turkmen) and Chinese Islamist militants (Uighurs) to maintain order, with cruelty, and organise the looting of resources (factories, oil, grain).

Always pushing forth, he rushed to the rescue of the Tripoli-based government of Fayez al-Sarraj, with whom he had signed oil exploration and defence agreements. The Turkish Army started to enlist, sometimes by force, Syrian and other Islamist mercenaries who had fighting the Syrian government since 2011, with the intention of dispatching them to Misrata, the stronghold of the Libyan and Egyptian Muslim Brothers, and Tripoli.

Despite the outcry in Libya and internationally, against the blatant interference, Erdogan didnt give up. He announced the deployment of Turkish troops, following approval given by a Turkish parliament dominated by Justice and Development Party Islamists and his nationalist allies.

He claimed that the mission of our soldiers there is coordination and thats what theyre doing right now, in a command centre. One of our lieutenant-generals will head this command centre.

Erdogan acknowledged that Turkey will also have other teams there as combat forces, outside our regular troops. In other words, they are the mercenaries of the Syrian armed opposition in the pay of Turkey. They will serve as cannon fodder.

Despite his bluster and boastfulness, Erdogan seems to be losing the game in Libya. Islamists who control the Sarraj government are losing momentum.

Their territory is shrinking. The fall of Sirte, a strategic point that controls access to Misrata, which happened whileTurkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, preceded by Sarraj, was being received in Algiers, is a sign the dice had been thrown.

Weakened and besieged, the Sarraj government could be forced to negotiate a face-saving exit but from a weak position. It would be an exit that Turkey's modern-day janissaries are unlikely to prevent.

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Turkey's new 'janissaries' head to Libya but may be too late for Sarraj - The Arab Weekly

Forces of the UN-backed Libyan government on Saturday announced an advance against the rival ... [+] east-based army in southern Tripoli. (Photo by Hamza Turkia/Xinhua via Getty) (Xinhua/ via Getty Images)

Europe will have to unite on a common position on Libya if it wants to keep third parties such as Turkey from exerting their influence on the war-stricken country.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Turkey was ready to send troops to Libya a move that is expected to be ratified by Turkeys parliament on January 06.

The decision comes after the two countries signed a maritime and military border agreement in November, riling EU members Greece and Cyprus as their oil and drilling exploration would be limited under the deal.

Turkey has long backed the GNA and sees itself as a regional force in the Middle East. (Photo by ... [+] Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)

The North African country has been beset in chaos since its leader Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in 2011 in a NATO-backed uprising.

Since then, the country has been divided between the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), headed by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj in Tripoli, and a militia run by commander Khalifa Haftar, who controls the east of the country.

In recent weeks, fighting around the capital has escalated with General Haftar announcing a final battle for Tripoli.

Turkey has long backed the GNA and sees itself as a regional force in the Middle East; whereas political rivals Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt all back General Haftar.

But Ankaras move is also a front to Europe as the maritime deal curbs gas and oil exploration off Cyprus coast in the eastern Mediterranean.

Greece and Cyprus have a long had territorial disputes with Turkey and say the maritime agreement is baseless and violates EU law.

Turkey has sent its own exploration vessels to the eastern Mediterranean. (Photo credit IAKOVOS ... [+] HATZISTAVROU/AFP via Getty Images)

EU leaders backed those claims and issued a statement at a December 12 summit, which unequivocally sided with Greece and Cyprus.

Israel and Egypt also stand to lose from the Turkish-Libyan agreement, as Cyprus has signed exploration deals with international firms and there are plans for a pipeline that would export gas to Europe.

But Turkey says the agreement protects its rights for gas exploration on Cyprus other half of the divided island, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

Over the past year, Turkey has sent its own exploration vessels to the eastern Mediterranean much to the EUs dismay.

And despite a U.N. embargo, Ankara has already sent military supplies to the GNA, Reuters reported last month citing a U.N report.

In mid-January, world leaders will meet in Berlin to try and find a political solution to end the conflict in Libya but the conference is unlikely to end the fighting.

Russia backs General Haftar, and it is believed there is an understanding with Turkey who backs the opposition not to come to blows in Libya. The foundation for a deal between the two countries is also reportedly being worked on.

European countries are divided over which side to support in Libya. (Photo by Hazem Turkia/Anadolu ... [+] Agency via Getty Images)

But any deal between Turkey and Russia would push the EU out, as Italys Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte warned on December 12.

"We must be united, we cannot allow actors even much more distant from Libya, to position themselves, settle their role in the Libyan scenario and claim the primacy for any solutions," he said.

However, EU unity will be hard to come by. European countries are divided over which side to support in Libya. Italy and others back Sarraj but France sides with Haftar.

If EU member states can agree on a side to support, it may also push the U.S. to take a decisive stance on the war-torn nation.

But if Brussels take a back seat and watches the conflict unfold as an impartial bystander, the EU risks losing its influence in Libya as well as its Mediterranean coasts.

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EU Divisions In Libya Leaves Space Wide Open For Turkey - Forbes