By Sami Zaptia.
Tripoli, 31 October 2013:
Speaking at yesterday’s press conference, Prime Minister Ali Zeidan announced that the training of members of . . .[restrict]the Libyan army will start very soon in Italy.
Zeidan said that most of these trainees would be made up of members of the thuwar (former fighters), who were already undergoing their basic training in Tripoli. The Prime Minister said that the training in Italy could start in one or two weeks.
He gave no indication of the numbers of thuwar expected to be sent to Italy, nor the duration of their stay there.
It will be recalled that in September Zeidan had announced that another 1,600 military personnel were to be sent within a month abroad for training in Turkey, Italy and the UK.
There was also to be another group to be trained by the US, with 8,000 being trained in bases in Bulgaria.
The UK had already agreed to train 2,000 Libyan military personnel in Britain as part of the wider training package for 8,000 servicemen agreed with a number of NATO members on the sidelines of the G8 summit earlier this summer. [/restrict]
