WORLD_ US to help track down Libyan missiles

US to help track down Libyan missiles

Mary Beth Sheridan Tripoli
October 15, 2011


An Indian airman displays the Igla IM missile system, a portable anti-aircraft weapon, similar to those being sought in Libya. Photo: AP

THE United States is planning to send dozens of former military personnel to Libya to help track down and destroy surface-to-air missiles from Muammar Gaddafi's stockpiles, which US officials fear could be used by terrorists to take down passenger jets.

The weapons experts are part of a rapidly expanding $US30 million program to secure Libya's conventional weapons, according to State Department officials.

Fourteen contractors with military backgrounds have been sent to help Libyan officials, and the US government is looking at sending dozens more. Thousands of pamphlets in Arabic, English and French will be delivered to neighbouring countries so border guards can recognise the heat-seeking missiles. It could become one of the three biggest US weapons-retrieval programs in the world, along with those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

''We have not seen any … attacks with loose missiles coming out of Libya yet,'' said Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. ''We're working as assiduously as we can to address the threat. It only takes one to make a real difference.''

Colonel Gaddafi was one of the world's top purchasers of the shoulder-fired missiles, buying about 20,000 in the 1970s and 1980s, according to US estimates.

While the weapons are of limited effectiveness against modern military aircraft, they still pose a threat to commercial passenger planes. Thousands of the missiles were destroyed in NATO bomb attacks on arms depots during the war and hundreds have been recovered by the new government. But an unknown number were carted off by Libyan rebel groups and civilians who swarmed into unguarded storage areas after Colonel Gaddafi's forces were defeated.

Egyptian Interior Ministry officials said they had arrested five groups of smugglers transporting weapons, including anti-aircraft missile launchers, from Libya across Egypt towards its border with Israel, raising new security concerns in the Sinai Peninsula.

Though Kalashnikov assault rifles are relatively widespread on both sides of the Sinai border, the presence of anti-aircraft missiles and other heavier weapons is a worrying development to the Israelis because they can be fired at the aircraft Israel relies on to patrol Gaza and conduct air strikes.

''We are definitely concerned by reports of Libyan arms entering Gaza, especially anti-aircraft and anti-armour weapons,'' a senior Israeli official said. ''We know that Hamas wants them and can pay for them.''

Unlike in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military has no troops in Libya who can secure the weapons. President Barack Obama has refused to deploy US military forces to Libya to avoid raising hackles in the Middle East and in Congress.

''We need help,'' Atia al-Mansouri, a military consultant to the governing Transitional National Council, said. Rebel groups had taken the weapons ''and they are a little more powerful than the army''.

Shoulder-fired missiles have emerged as a global threat, with more than 40 civilian aircraft hit by the weapons since the 1970s.

Weapons proliferation experts say Western and Libyan officials did not focus enough on ensuring Tripoli's weapons depots were safeguarded as soon as the capital fell.

''It wasn't taken that seriously until the looting began full-on,'' said Rachel Stohl, an expert on the international arms trade at the Stimson Centre think tank.

US officials said they had done as much as they could, given much of Libya was under Colonel Gaddafi's control until recently. Officials raised the issue with the rebel council that declared itself Libya's interim government in March. Washington gave $US3 million in May to two non-governmental groups trying to secure weapons sites in eastern Libya.

The contractors being sent to Libya, part of a ''quick reaction force'' overseen by the State Department, will be attached to about 20 teams of security personnel. So far, the Americans have surveyed 20 of the former regime's three dozen known ammunition storage sites, trying to determine what is missing, officials say. Each of the sites contains hundreds of bunkers.

Britain has sent a small military team to help find and dismantle the missiles. So far, the Libyan-led teams have recovered hundreds of the missiles, but rebels say hundreds or thousands are outside the interim government's reach.

WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK TIMES

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-to-help-track-down-libyan-missiles-20111014-1lp8w.html#ixzz1anJ784xK



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