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UK supplying telecommunications equipment to Libyan rebels

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, April 5, IRNA -- The British government is improving its contacts with Libyan rebels by supplying them with unspecified telecommunications equipment, Foreign Secretary William Hague has announced.

“Given the urgent need of the interim transitional national council for telecommunications equipment, the National Security Council has decided this morning to supply it with such equipment,” Hague said.

But when challenged in parliament on Monday, he said that he did “not want to go into details about the exact specification for various reasons, including that, if I did so, it would be easier for the regime to interfere with the telephones.”

“However, it is telecommunications equipment, which enables people to say where there is desperate humanitarian need and when a town is under attack, and to speak to us in the outside world,” he told MPs, denying that it included a missile guidance system.

His announcement, his last before parliament adjourns for a three-week Easter break, comes after Prime Minister David Cameron said last week that Britain agrees with the US that UN security resolution 1973 could be interpreted to permit the supply of arms to rebel forces in Libya.

The decision comes as Western governments have been trying to engineer regime change in Libya as Nato-led forces are imposing a no-fly-zone but without any breakthrough in the military stalemate.

In his statement, Hague announced that Britain was also lifting its ban on members of the Libyan regime entering the UK if they renounce their loyalty to Muammar Gaddafi, following the arrival of foreign minister Moussa Koussa.

Libyan ministers and officials who were prepared to abandon the regime would be 'treated with respect and in accordance with our laws', he said, adding that Britain was speaking with its partners about the merits of removing restrictions in the case of anyone currently sanctioned by the EU and UN.

The foreign secretary again denied that a deal had been made about Koussa but revealed he was not under arrest and was free to leave the country although Scottish authorities were seeking to question him about the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

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Islamic Republic News Agency/IRNA NewsCode: 30324172