RABAT: Ministers from countries across the Sahel and Maghreb agreed yesterday to create a border security training centre in a bid to confront Islamist-linked violence plaguing the huge desert region.
Delegates hailed the proposal in the “Rabat Declaration” adopted by 19 countries at a conference in Morocco’s capital as a step towards curbing jihadist unrest in the Sahara.
The training centre, which Morocco’s Foreign Minster Salaheddine Mezouar said could be in Rabat, would be complemented by closer intelligence cooperation and new technology at borders.
“We welcome the idea of setting up a training centre on border security,” Libya’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdelaziz told reporters.
“Libya has more than 4,200 kilometres of land borders and more than 2,000 kilometres of a maritime border. How can we achieve border security without regional and international help?”
Tripoli, which hosted the last regional conference on border security in March 2012, has struggled to impose order since Nato-backed rebels overthrew and killed dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
As part of Western efforts to aid the security push, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said France had recently signed a contract to train 1,000 Libyan policemen. “We hope to sign a contract to train another 2,000 policemen for counterterrorism, and an accord with the head of (Libya’s) national security directorate.”
Mezouar warned that the vast Sahel expanse of rock and sand stretching from Senegal to Somalia had become “an open space for different terrorist groups, and drugs and arms trafficking networks threaten the security of the whole region”.
He said regional states have the political will “but need the means... to confront the different security challenges they face”.
At the last meeting on Sahel border security 18 months ago, in Tripoli, an action plan was adopted aimed at boosting coordinated efforts against terrorism, illegal immigration and organised crime.
Yesterday’s conference tasked Libya with setting up a secretariat to oversee implementation of the Tripoli action plan and the Rabat Declaration, and to report back in two months.
AFP
