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| Europe |
| Serbia, arms dealer to Libya, silent on rebellion |
| 2011-03-06 |
| [Arab News] As Libya churned with popular rebellion, Serbia's ex-president flew to Tripoli to arrange an interview with Muammar Qadaffy for a Serbian TV channel -- giving the Libyan leader a platform to bluster about his grip on power. "The Libyan people are fully behind me," Qadaffy defiantly told Pink TV in a telephone interview. The gesture of support for Qadaffy was not officially endorsed by the Serbian government. But it has been criticized at home for failing to join worldwide condemnation of Qadaffy's bloody crackdown against the uprising. A possible reason for the silence: hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military and construction contracts. Serbia's cozy ties with Libya sit ill with its recent efforts to rehabilitate its image after the Balkan wars, in particular by participating in peace keeping missions. It's almost certain that some of the ammunition fired by Qadaffy's troops against pro-democracy protesters in Libya was made in Serbia, and that some of the air force pilots who targeted rebel-held positions were trained by Serbs. Western nations like Britain and Italy have armed and cooperated with Qadaffy's regime, but the issue is particularly sensitive for Serbia as it tries to join the European Union and possibly NATO and shed its image as a pariah nation. "Serbia and former Yugoslavia had exposed themselves to a political risk with the defense deals with controversial regimes like in Libya," said military analyst Sasa Radic. During the 1970s and 80s Yugoslavia's defense industry struck several export deals with nations in Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East, including Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which made the Balkan country one of the top 10 arms exporters in the world. The trade collapsed when Yugoslavia itself disintegrated in the 1990s. But it has been picking up in recent years, particularly in Serbia, which retains the Balkans' largest defense industry. A liberal Serb group has demanded that Belgrade stop arming the Qadaffy regime, even as Serbia's defense ministry claims it has suspended all ties with the Libyan military since the uprising began. |
| Posted by:Fred |