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Tripoli, 22 April:
Defence Minister Osama Juwaily has said that one of the main reasons why his ministry has been unable to . . .[restrict]function properly is because it has no functioning operational base. All the main military centres suffered varying degrees of destruction during the war against Qaddafi and most of those that were intact had been commandeered by revolutionary brigades.
Speaking on Watan TV on Saturday, the minister was responding to growing criticism of his ministry.
The ministry has been attacked over the slow integration of the brigades into the armed forces.
Juwaily said that there were a considerable number of obstacles preventing the ministry from carrying out its duties. The restructuring of a modern military establishment in an orderly fashion needed a lot of time and effort.
The government, in this case, was having to start from scratch, he said. The ministry did not exist in the past, nor did it have any working staff or administrative systems or structure. In addition what Libya was going through were exceptional circumstances.
The Ministry of Defense, Juwaily said, should have at its command an army with soldiers, weapons, equipment, premises, regulations and rules. None of these components, he said, were presently available.
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