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By Houda Mzioudet.
Tripoli, 23 September 2013:
Around 1,600 more military personnel are to be sent abroad for training, Prime Minister Ali Zeidan . . .[restrict]announced during his weekly press conference conference yesterday.
The first groups are due to be leaving for training in Turkey, Italy and the UK with a month, said Zeidan, who added that, as revealed earlier, another batch of soldiers was to be trained under US supervision. Earlier this month it was announced that Washington intended to school up to 8,000 Libyan troops at bases in Bulgaria.
Zeidan also said that he had written to Defence Minister Abdullah Al-Thini about the boosting of the army, by the recruitment of 200 young men who had taken part in the Revolution. Zeidan explained that measures will be taken to grant them military rank and incorporate them in the armed forces or the police.
The Prime Minister’s announcement comes in the week that he was accompanied by senior army commanders to watch the passing out parade of 1,400 army soldiers at the Police College in Tripoli’s Salah al-Deen district. Zeidan was joined on the official stand by Chief of Staff General Abdulsalam Jadallah al-Obeidi, the Chief of Staff of the Air Defence Forces, Brigadier-General Juma Hussein El-Abani, the Minister of Defence and other military officers as well as a number of ambassadors of foreign countries. [/restrict]
