Libya

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, and yesterday I offered Prime Minister Sarraj technical support in relation to the central bank, the national oil company and the Libyan Investment Authority. It is a tribute to Libyan resilience and ingenuity that international partners recognise the figures who have continued to run those institutions throughout this period of chaos over the past few years as technically competent and well motivated—they have been doing a good job. Prime Minister Sarraj has now brought the competing appointees—the eastern and the western chairmen of each of those institutions—together to work together and to seek to forge consensus on how the institutions can go forward as truly national institutions on a collaborative basis.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

I was interested in what the Foreign Secretary had to say about the current state of Daesh, and how it needs to be contained now and not allowed to spread further. Are we talking to other allies, such as Jordan, about working on training deployments and training up troops? If we do not contain Daesh now in north Africa, it will simply be an expanding problem.

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, we are talking to other partners, such as Jordan, about how we can provide support to the Libyan Government. Of course other actors are acting independently; Egypt has a recognised vital interest, because of its long land border with Libya, and some of the problems Egypt has been facing in the Western desert are directly attributable to penetration from Libya. The House will recall the continuing issue of General Haftar, the commander of the Libyan national army. He is an important figure who commands significant military forces in the east but is unacceptable as a command figure to many who are supporting the new Government. That is one of the big challenges Prime Minister Sarraj is facing.