Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Gaddafi rejects Mediterranean bloc
Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has opposed the proposal of a so-called Mediterranean Union.
Gaddafi said at a mini-summit of North African and Syrian leaders on Tuesday that it would harm efforts to achieve Arab and African unity.
"We are member states of the Arab League and also the African Union and we will not take any chances with damaging Arab or African Unity," he said.
"Our European partners need to understand that. We are in favour of partnership projects but they must take account of these red lines."
"If Europe wants to co-operate with us, let them do so through the Arab League or the African Union ... we will not accept that they deal only with a small group."
Gaddafi said that he believed the Mediterranean Union proposal was just another "passing fad" which would make no more progress than the so-called Euro-Mediterranean partnership process launched in Barcelona in 1995. (Al Jazeera)
Labels: Libya, Mediterranean Bloc
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Jailed Swiss engineers had nuclear plans for Libya
Three Swiss engineers arrested four years ago on suspicion of smuggling nuclear secrets to Libya were in possession of detailed plans on how to make weapons when detained, the Swiss government revealed Friday. The revelation came as the government said it had destroyed these documents last November "to prevent them from falling into the hands of a terrorist organization or non-authorized state." "These were detailed plans on how to make nuclear weapons, of gas centrifuges to produce enriched uranium, and of missile guidance systems," Swiss President Pascal Couchepin said in a statement. Couchepin said Switzerland was obliged to destroy the sensitive documents because it would otherwise have been in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the operation was supervised by officials from the International Atomic Energy Authority. The three engineers - a father and two sons - were arrested in Germany in October 2004 and then extradited to Switzerland in May 2005. The father was released in 2006 but his two sons are still in prison. They are accused of helping Libya develop a nuclear weapons program and were alleged to have been in contact with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced father of Pakistan's nuclear program. (AFP)
Labels: Libya, Nuclear Power, Switzerland
Friday, April 18, 2008
Russia swaps Libya debt for deals
Russia has agreed to cancel $4.5bn (£2.3bn) of Libyan debt in exchange for major contracts for Russian firms.
The announcement came during a visit to Tripoli on Thursday by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
The two countries signed deals on energy co-operation, military assistance and construction of a 500km (310-mile) railway line in Libya.
Libya was a big importer of Soviet weaponry during the Cold War, when it accumulated large debts.
Russia's state gas monopoly Gazprom plans large-scale exploration and production projects with Libya's national energy company. They will include liquefied natural gas installations and gas-fired electricity plants in Libya.
Russia will provide the technology for Libya to build a major rail link between Sirte and Benghazi. Construction is expected to take four years. (BBC)
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
German training of Libyan security 'goes back to 1979'
German police began covertly training security guards for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in 1979, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported on Monday.
The newspaper said the federal police, the BKA, had confirmed that from 1979 they sent an officer to Libya twice a year - once in spring and once in autumn - "for training reasons".
It said a former German parachute commander also helped to train Libyan forces between 1979 and 1983 and did so with the blessing of the German intelligence service.
The arrangement was seen as a way "to thank" Tripoli for having urged the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to distance itself from Germany's radical Red Army Faction, the newspaper said.
The Red Army Faction conducted a terror campaign against the West German state and killed some 30 people before it formally disbanded in 1998.
According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine, the secret security cooperation between Libya and Germany continued until the attack on the La Belle disco in West Berlin, which was frequented by US soldiers, in 1986. Two Palestinians, a German and a Libyan were jailed over the bombing. (AFP)
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Italian probe alleges huge arms sale bid by Libya in grab for global role
The Libyan officer tried to cloak the purpose of his call to the Italian arms dealer. "A friend," he said, wanted to buy 1 million "pieces" and 50 million items of "food."
But when that phone call was placed in 2006, Italian police were listening. They knew the meaning. Libya was shopping for guns - lots of them.
Authorities shadowed the negotiations between Libyan officials and a group of black-market dealers from across Italy for a year before they moved in and broke up what would have been a $64 million deal for hundreds of thousands of Chinese-made assault rifles.
The case, detailed in documents obtained by The Associated Press, raises questions about whether Libya, a country eagerly shedding its reputation as a sponsor of terrorism, is still surreptitiously supporting suspect groups and regimes. The investigation also underscores the Italian underworld's role as a go-between for illegal arms deals. (AP)
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Banned Islamists freed in Libya
Libya has freed 90 members of a banned Islamic group from jail after talks negotiated by a human rights group headed by the Libyan leader's son.
The BBC's Rana Jawad says there were scenes of jubilation at the prison and one man kissed the lens of a camera.
She says most of them are known to have been charged with belonging to a political party, which is illegal.
But Muammar Gaddafi's government said the al-Muquatila group members were planning acts of violence.
In 2006, Libya also pardoned more than 80 members of the banned Muslim Brothers. (BBC)
Labels: Libya
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Berlin denies Libya training role
Germany has denied media reports of official involvement in an alleged scheme to train Libyan security forces.
Eight members of a police commando squad have been suspended from their elite SEK unit while an investigation into the alleged training is conducted.
They are suspected of illegally working in their spare time for a private firm that trained Libyan anti-terror police.
Germany's foreign ministry has denied that the embassy in Tripoli supported the firm's training scheme. (BBC)
Saturday, April 5, 2008
German military police officers accused of training Libyans
German military police officers and soldiers, including members of the special forces, are under investigation for allegedly training Libyan security forces in anti-terror techniques in their spare time.
About 30 officers are believed to have been involved in illegal training programmes after being recruited by a former officer of Germany's elite anti-terrorism unit, the GSG-9 commando, who ran his own private security company.
The men, who were secretly flown to Tripoli while on leave, are reported to have received up to €15,000 (£11,800) each. Their superiors did not know about the training sessions.
According to the Westfalen Blatt newspaper, some of the officers were also rewarded with holidays in Tunisia, which they took before or after the training sessions. (Guardian)
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Gaddafi condemns Arab leaders
Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan president, poured contempt on fellow Arab leaders at a summit that was overshadowed by the absence of several key figures.
At the annual Arab summit, which opened on Saturday, he criticised Arab countries for doing nothing while the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and overthrew Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi president.
Gaddafi also repeated his frequently made proposal that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be settled by creating one democratic state where the two peoples live together, to be called Isratine. (Al Jazeera)
Labels: Arab Leauge, Libya
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Libyan president says he will fire Cabinet (JPost)
Libyan President Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi said he would dismantle the current cabinet over what he called mismanagement of oil revenue.
The leader told his parliament that large projects were falling behind schedule and that all the country's six million citizens had the right to benefit from oil-related revenues.
The current structure of government had failed, Al-Qadhafi said.
The parliament will discuss dismantling cabinet committees over the next few days.
All portfolios in the cabinet headed by Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi will undergo reform apart from three ministries - security, defense and the ministry in charge of services and public works, according to the London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat.
Al-Qadhafi said new committees would be formed by citizens who will benefit directly from oil revenues. (Link)
Labels: Libya
Monday, March 3, 2008
Gadhafi 'abolishes' most ministries (AFP)
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has ordered a raft of government ministries abolished and their powers handed over to the people in an angry tirade against state graft and mismanagement. "For years, Libyans have been unhappy with the workings of their country's ministries which have been transformed into a labyrinthine bureaucracy in which corruption and maladministration reign," Gadhafi told Libya's equivalent of parliament late on Sunday. "Apart from the main departments of defense, internal security and foreign affairs and those responsible for strategic projects like the Great Man-Made River and airport and road construction," ministries will be "abolished," the Libyan leader said.
The $37 billion annual budget allocated to the errant ministries should instead "be shared among the people so that they can manage their affairs themselves," Gadhafi told the session of the General People's Congress in the coastal city of Sirte. The Great Man-Made River is one of the Libyan leader's flagship projects intended to bring water from underground aquifers deep in the Sahara to the Mediterranean coast where the overwhelming majority of the country's population live. The regime has also set great store by a string of major infrastructure projects it announced last year in the run-up to celebrations for the anniversary of Gadhafi's 1969 seizure of power from a Western-backed monarchy. (Link)
Labels: Libya
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