UK plan to station 1,000 troops in Libya under attack
LONDON, 27 Mar - (ANA) - Senior members of the ruling British Conservative party are in a row with the Government over what they claim are "disastrous" plans to station up to 1,000 British troops in a specially-created "Green Zone" in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. The plans are part of a joint British-Italian military assistance package to Libya's new unity government, which was formed last month in a bid to end more than a year of civil war. The Government has insisted that British troops will do only training rather than front-line combat, and that no firm decisions have been made about where they would be stationed. But members of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee say moves are being considered to base the training mission in Tripoli itself, despite opposition among Libyans to any kind of foreign troop presence on their soil. Crispin Blunt, the Tory MP an ex-Army officer who chairs the committee, told the Daily Telegraph that the troops would be sitting targets for attacks by the Islamic State jihadists that now control parts of Libya. They could also be at risk from militias opposed to the new unity government. "This particular plan of sending Western troops anywhere near Tripoli would be a singularly bad idea," said Mr Blunt, who was an adviser to Malcolm Rifkind during his terms as Defence and Foreign Secretary in the 1990s. "Even if you say it is just a training mission rather than a combat one, any foreign troop presence in Tripoli will be seen as a Western intervention. Everybody and their mother will be trying to have a pop at them." The military assistance package is being offered to the new Libyan government amid concerns that Isil is strengthening its hold in the country, where it now controls Colonel Gaddafi's home city of Sirte. The mission’s job would be to train Libyan troops in general security duties rather than in how to tackle Isil. That latter task is expected to be left to Western special forces units working with existing Libyan militias. But even a training mission is a sensitive issue in Libya, where a number of powerful factions see the new government as a UN-created imposition. Even Libyans who support the training mission have told The Telegraph that they would prefer it to be based in neighbouring Tunisia, if only so the new government does not seem reliant on foreign military might, and as the Sunday Telegraph reported last month, small units of British special forces are already believed to be in operation in the country along with US and French counterparts. (ANA)

FA/ANA/27 March 2016--------