NATO to Send Team to Libya to Assess Security Aid
Source: New York Times
NATO is sending a team of experts to Libya to assess how the alliance can provide security assistance, notably military training, to help the turbulent North African nation combat Islamist militants claiming allegiance to Al Qaeda and other threats.
Libya has been bedeviled by instability since a NATO air campaign helped topple the country’s longtime dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, in 2011. The pledge to help Libya’s fragile new government came as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other NATO defense ministers began a two-day meeting in Brussels focused largely on Afghanistan and cybersecurity.
The NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said at a news conference that a team of experts would visit Libya “as soon as possible” and report back by the end of June. He said that providing security assistance “would be a fitting way to continue our cooperation with Libya after we successfully took action to protect the Libyan people two years ago.”
The overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi’s autocratic government has left the new government struggling to fill a security vacuum. Last September, Islamist militants attacked the United States Mission in Benghazi, resulting in the death of the American ambassador and three of his colleagues, an episode that created a political firestorm in Washington over whether security issues were taken seriously enough and how President Obama’s administration responded.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/world/africa/nato-to-send-team-to-libya-to-assess-security-aid.html
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