Global Security Newswire

A Libyan Defense Ministry spokesman said last week the nation's new army is in "full control" of the former Qadhafi regime's chemical warfare materials, the Arabic language website al-Sharq al-Awsat reported (see GSN, Jan. 20).

"The scarecrow of Libya's chemical weapons is over. The new Libyan army is in full control of all materials that may harm the Libyan people and neighboring countries," Col. Ahmad Bani stated. Despite Bani's pronouncement, reports indicate Qadhafi-era weaponry has been smuggled out of the country and used by rebels in insurgent attacks in Mali.

Libya's new government has assumed control over what remains of a 25-metric-ton declared stockpile of mustard blister agent that had been partially destroyed before the popular uprising erupted in the country in early 2011. The replacement government to the toppled Muammar Qadhafi regime late last year announced it had discovered a limited cache of sulfur mustard agent that Tripoli had not declared upon joining the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2004.

Officials from the convention's monitoring body, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, last month verified the existence of the previously secret chemical warfare materials.

"The chemical weapons and the mustard gas that were found in the Waddan area [in Libya's south] and in other places have been put under full control. These places are safe and under the Libyan army's control," Bani said in an English translation provided by the BBC.

Many foreign states are worried about the ability of the nascent civilian government to control the nation's lengthy borders, according to the report. Bani acknowledged that not all of the men guarding the border were formal army personnel.

"You know that the term revolutionaries is not given to creatures coming from another planet," he said. "The Libyan revolutionaries are a mixture of army personnel, police and civilian citizens. So the protection of Libya's border is the responsibility of all Libyans" (al-Sharq al-Awsat, Feb. 1).