England, March 06: The British government has placed its troops on standby to deploy them to Libya at 24 hours’ notice, if the crisis in the country escalates, it has been emerged.
The Ministry of Defense (MoD) confirmed on Saturday that the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion of the Royal Regiment Scotland, is on “notice to move” as part of the military build-up in the southern Mediterranean, although there were no immediate plan to fly troops to Libya, an MoD spokeswoman said.
“Troops from 3rd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland have been on short notice to move to provide assistance to the evacuation and humanitarian efforts as required,” she said.
Human rights groups said more than 6,000 people have so far been killed in Libya as the country’s despotic ruler intensified his crackdown on the protesters who are calling for freedom and democracy.
The Libyan people have revolted against the regime of Colonel Gaddafi who has been ruling the country for more than 40 years.
The uprising, now in its 3rd week, is part of a wave of Islamic awakening, which is jolting the Middle East and North Africa for the past 2 months. The Muslim nations of Egypt and Tunisia recently succeeded in their campaigns to unseat their despotic rulers whom were ruling the countries for decades.
However, the UK government is mulling over deploying troops to a country where it has been supplying its regime with various types of weaponry to suppress its own people over the last three weeks.
On February 23, the Daily Mail published a picture of a British-made armored vehicle, which the Libyan ruler had obtained through a £5 million contract with the then British government in 2007 to suppress his own nation.
The contract also included armored personnel carriers, water cannon, crowd control ammunition and tear gas/irritant ammunitions.
The Libyan despot has been using these British-made weapons over recent days to silence his own people who are fed-up with the corrupt regime, which has been ruling them despotically for more than 40 years.
The British government should have obviously known that these weapons could be used to annihilate the oppressed people of Libya, yet they struck deals after deals with the dictator to supply his regime with the weapons and to contribute to his cling on power through the ages.
In 2007, the British government agreed a £5 million package with Libya, which included armored personnel carriers and water cannon. Since then the government has sold arms worth tens of millions of pounds to Gaddafi’s regime.
As recently as last summer, the coalition government approved licenses to sell products to Libya including ‘crowd control ammunition’, ‘tear gas/irritant ammunition’ and sniper rifles.
Now, the MoD has confirmed that The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, had been placed on heightened readiness, prepared to deploy to North Africa at 24 hours’ notice.
The 600-strong infantry unit returned from Afghanistan in late 2009 is based at Fort George near Inverness. “They’re ready, just in case,” said the MoD.
Meanwhile, government sources said that British diplomats and specialist advisers could be deployed to Benghazi in eastern Libya to work with leaders trying to co-ordinate efforts to oust the Libyan dictator!
Publicly, Britain will only admit to sending diplomats to engage in political dialogue with the Libyan opposition. However, both Special Forces soldiers and MI6 officers are thought to be on standby for deployment to eastern Libya.
Richard Northern, the British ambassador to Libya – who left the country last week – is coordinating British contacts with the anti-Gaddafi groups, who are concentrated around Benghazi.
——Agencies