Libya halting fuel supplies to Switzerland
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 03:40:00 07/25/2008
TRIPOLI -- OPEC member Libya said on Thursday it will halt fuel supplies to key oil client Switzerland in the latest reprisal for last week's brief detention in Geneva of a son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.
The General National Maritime Transport Company and the Port Authority said in a joint statement they had "decided to halt Libyan oil tankers carrying oil products to Switzerland."
The state-run companies also decided to "bar Swiss ships from unloading or entering Libyan ports," it added.
An official with the transport company told AFP the decision was taken on Wednesday but was unable to say if it had yet been enforced.
A Swiss delegation met Libyan officials at the foreign ministry in Tripoli in a bid to defuse tensions, diplomatic sources said.
The Swiss foreign ministry has said that the delegation would provide explanations on the July 15 arrest of Hannibal Kadhafi, 32, and his wife in a Geneva hotel.
The couple, freed on bail two days later, was accused of assaulting members of their staff.
A spokeswoman for the Swiss economy ministry hoped that the standoff would be resolved rapidly.
"Diplomatic exchanges are under way right now," she told AFP in Geneva on Thursday, adding that there were no risks of fuel shortages in Switzerland. "Sources of supply can be widened."
Oil prices rose slightly on Thursday following the statement from Libya with Brent North Sea crude up $0.58 to $125.87 in early London trading.
The Libyan transport company and port authority also warned of unspecified "new escalatory measures" against Switzerland and demanded that Bern "closes within the next few hours the case it fabricated" against Hannibal Kadhafi.
It also demanded a formal Swiss apology over the arrest of Hannibal who says he was mistreated during his detention.
Meanwhile several hundred employees from the two companies demonstrated outside the Swiss embassy in Tripoli before taking their protest to the foreign ministry where Swiss and Libyan officials were locked in talks.
Demonstrators held portraits of the Libyan leader and Hannibal -- the official "adviser" to the maritime transport company which owns 10 vessels and handles nearly all oil exports from Libya.
Switzerland urged its citizens in Libya to register with their embassy.
On Wednesday the Swiss foreign ministry said that Libya began taking retaliatory measures as early as July 17, when Hannibal was freed on bail.
Libya recalled its envoy to Switzerland, suspended issuing visas to Swiss citizens and Swiss businesses in Libya to close, the ministry said. Air links between the two countries also have been reduced.
Swiss food group Nestle said its Egyptian representative in Libya was held for several hours and then released, while the ABB engineering firm said one of its Swiss employees was detained.
On Wednesday the Swiss petroleum industry played down the impact of any fuel standoff with Libya.
"Libya would be punishing itself" by cutting off supplies to Switzerland, the head of the Swiss Petroleum Association Rolf Hartel told AFP in Geneva.
"Economically it would make no sense," he said, adding that one of the two Swiss oil refineries, at Collombey, was owned by the Libyan company Tamoil which also runs 320 filling stations in the country.
Oil distributors in Switzerland, Migrol and BP, said they had not experienced supply problems.
Migrol director Daniel Hofer also told AFP he did not expect the row to have a serious impact on oil prices.
Kadhafi's son has had previous run-ins with the police in Europe.
In 2005 he was investigated after incidents in two Paris hotels and was once stopped by French police for driving down the Champs Elysees at 140 kilometers per hour (87 mph).
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