By Libya Herald staff.
Tripoli, 23 June 2014:
Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Thinni had talks today with the third senior British official to fly . . .[restrict]into Tripoli in just over a week.
This afternoon it was the UK’s Minister of State for International Development, Alan Duncan. The two discussed ways the UK could help on training and building up state institutions in Libya.
Duncan’s Department for International Development is Britain’s official foreign aid arm and is involved in kick-starting a number of projects in Libya.
Last week, Thinni met with UK Special Envoy to Libya Jonathan Powell to discuss UK support in promoting dialogue in Libya and a week ago with the UK government’s National Security Advisor Kim Darroch.
According to Prime Minister Thinni’s office, today’s talks looked in particular at military and police training. The UK is already involved in the former. Some 300 Libya soldiers arrived just under a fortnight ago at Bassingbourn Barracks in south east England which has been reopened specifically to train Libyan troops. The 300 are the first of 2,000 troops who be trained in the UK.
Thinni and Duncan also discussed the current situation in Libya, in particular the security crisis. They further focused on the Libyan economy and how it could be stimulated, not least by the return of international companies to complete projects, and on the need to resume oil production and exports. [/restrict]
