Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia plans to immediately evacuate its citizens from Libya, Coordinating Minister for Political, Security and Legal Affairs Djoko from Suyanto said.

"Because conditions of communication between Indonesia and Tripoli is not like with Egypt tonight we must confirm the technical mechanism of the evacuation," he said here on Thursday.

He said there were two options that the government could take namely first evacuating the citizens to a safer place like Jordan and then pick them up to be taken home.

"That is when the situation is very urgent and the evacuation needs to be immediately carried out," he said.

The second option is evacuating them directly from Libya to Indonesia like when evacuating nations from Egypt recently, he said.

"Perhaps they have to stop over in Egypt or Jeddah for refueling or to Tripoli, Jedda or Cairo and then to Indonesia," he said.

For the second option he said the government had to assure that the citizens to be evacuated must be ready at the airport when the evacuation was done.

"Hopefully it will be smoother than when evacuating citizens from Egypt," he said.

He said the government again appointed former foreign minister Hassa Wirajuda to lead the evacuation task force.

"We will extend the task force for evacuation from Egypt to handle evacuation from Tripoli. It has experienced with internal coordination and conducting evacuation from Cairo to Jakarta. So it is easier than setting up a new one," he said.

With regard to the plan Djoko said four foreign ministry officials would leave for Libya to reinforce the embassy officials in Tripoli this evening.

"Perhaps the embassy will also be backed up by nearby embassies such as in Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan," he said.
(T.R018/H-YH/HAJM/A014)

Editor: Priyambodo RH
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