Libya summons US envoy to protest at Trump remarks

Oct 25 (Reuters) – Libya’s foreign ministry summoned the US chargé d’affaires on Sunday to protest against rally statements by President Donald Trump it described as “offensive”, after he called the North African nation “terror-infested”.

• The ministry said it rejected any statements that “undermine the dignity of its people or diminish their standing”

• At Saturday’s rally in Perry, Georgia, Trump said, “(US Senator) Jon Ossoff personally sponsored a bill to bring armies of migrants from terror-infested countries like Libya, Yemen, Haiti, Somalia. Remember what I called them? Shithouse countries,” in a reference to remarks made during his first term

• The US was committed to ties with Libya, Trump said on Truth Social on Sunday night, calling its people “proud, resilient, hospitable, and deserving of peace and prosperity”

• “We respect the Libyan people and the sacrifices that brave Libyans made fighting ISIS, the common enemy of both our peoples, but Libya cannot remain a corridor for illegal migration, and this must end now,” he wrote

• Libya’s rival administrations in the east and west denounced Trump’s remarks, rejecting attempts to draw Libya into what they called “electoral debates”

(Reporting by Menna Alaa El-Din, Ahmed Elumami, Bhargav Acharya and Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Ros Russell and Clarence Fernandez)