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Egypt’s Sisi Tells West to Keep Out of Libya, Urges Support for Eastern Commander

March 17, 2016

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has cautioned Western powers against launching a military intervention in Libya and instead urged them to support retired general Khalifa Haftar, based in the eastern parts of the conflict-ridden country. Speaking to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the defense minister-turned-president said that the West and its allies should focus on propping up the army of Libya’s internationally recognized government, commanded by Haftar. War-torn Libya has had two rival administrations since 2014, when the internationally recognized government was driven from the capital Tripoli by an alliance of militias. “If we provide arms and support to the Libyan National Army, it can do the job much better than anyone else, better than any external intervention that would risk putting us in a situation that could get out of hand and provoke uncontrollable developments,” Sisi said in the interview. History has “spoken clearly,” the president continued, discussing the problems faced by externally intervening forces that try to impose peace on another country. “Two lessons must be kept in mind: that of Afghanistan and that of Somalia,” he said. “Those were long foreign interventions [that started] more than 30…


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