BRUSSELS, June 03, 2013 (AFP) NATO defence ministers will discuss the possibility of training Libya's military to ensure it is able to police the country's borders properly, a senior US defence official said Monday. The official, who asked not to be named, said the idea was at an early stage but NATO's 28 defence ministers meeting Tuesday and Wednesday at the alliance's headquarters near Brussels would look ...

  SINGAPORE, June 02, 2013 (AFP) France is willing help Libya secure its borders from militant Islamist groups fleeing Mali, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Sunday. Security officials say the vast deserts of southern Libya are becoming the latest safe havens for al-Qaida linked fighters who fled neighboring Mali after France sent troops there in January to prevent a Islamist coup. "France is a ...

AGADEZ, Niger, May 27, 2013 (AFP) Niger's president said Monday that attackers who bombed an army base and French-run uranium mine, leaving 38 people dead, entered his country from southern Libya, where he warned further attacks were being planned on Chad. "For Niger in particular, the main threat has moved from the Malian border to the Libyan border. I confirm in effect that the enemy who attacked us... co ...

  BRUSSELS, May 22, 2013 (AFP) EU leaders agreed Wednesday to send a civilian border assistance mission to Libya which should begin operations next month, AFP reported. The mission, dubbed EUBAM Libya, will help the country re-establish effective controls at its land, sea and air borders. "EUBAM Libya is an important mission for Libya and the entire region but also for the security of EU borders," EU foreig ...

 WASHINGTON, May 13, 2013 (AFP) The United States has moved military forces closer to Libya since the Benghazi attack so they will be ready to respond to threats against diplomatic personnel, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday. "We are prepared to respond if necessary, if conditions deteriorate or if we were called upon," spokesman George Little told reporters. "Obviously we have moved assets and personnel," ...

WASHINGTON, May 8, 2013 (AFP) The White House on Tuesday accused Republicans of politicizing the attack on the US diplomatic post in Benghazi last year, as a high profile hearing into the episode went ahead in Congress. Career diplomats told a House of Representatives committee that the US mission in Libya failed to meet crucial safety standards, possibly contributing the deaths of four Americans on Septemb ...

WASHINGTON, May 8, 2013 (AFP) A career diplomat told Congress on Wednesday that the US mission in Benghazi in Libya had failed to meet crucial security standards, a deficiency that may have contributed to American deaths last year. Eric Nordstrom, the regional security officer at the US Embassy in Tripoli in the months before the Benghazi attack, also said senior State Department officials were aware of sec ...

   MEXICO CITY, April 20, 2013 (AFP) A judge late Friday released two women, a Canadian and a Mexican, held for their alleged role in a daring 2011 scheme to smuggle one of late Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's sons into Mexico. The judge ruled that several aspects of the charges against Canadian Cynthia Vanier and Mexican Gabriela de Cueto were not properly supported, an official in Mexico's attorney general ...

TRIPOLI, April 15, 2013 (AFP) A Libyan journalist held in prison for four months charged with insulting the judiciary has been hospitalised after going on hunger strike, his lawyer said on Monday. Amara Abdullah al-Khitabi, 67, editor of the private newspaper Al-Umma, "has been on hunger strike for three weeks," his lawyer Ramadhan Salem told AFP, and said his client was suffering from serious health proble ...

 BRUSSELS, March 06, 2013 (AFP) Libya's Tripoli airport authorities were hooked up for the first time Wednesday with Interpol as part of a European Union funded plan to help Libya tighten control of its porous borders. The EU and Interpol inaugurated the passport control capacity at Tripoli International Airport as part of a 2.2-million-euro EU project to improve border security and help security sector ref ...

by Anna SMOLCHENKO MOSCOW, Feb 05, 2013 (AFP) A slick documentary film has mysteriously emerged on the Russian Internet where former ambassadors, an ex-general and even an ex-prime minister line up to accuse Dmitry Medvedev of betraying Russia's interests while he served as president. It is unclear who could be behind the anonymous but professionally-shot film accusing Medvedev of treason over the NATO-led ...

LONDON, Jan 31, 2013 (AFP) The Arab Spring has given way to new governments that are failing to respect basic rights such as freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch warned as it published its annual report Thursday. The US-based group urged the young Islamist regimes of countries such as Egypt, Libya and Tunisia to build "genuine" democracies, saying that even democratically-elected governments did not ha ...