Sami Zaptia TRIPOLI — Prime Minister Ali Zidan repeated his belief that Libya would need international mediation or arbitration in its effort to collect arms from the public and militias. Speaking at Tuesday's press conference, Zidan said that Libyans do not trust each other enough in order to hand-over arms to one another, and that the international community would need to participate in this process. He added that the pretext of guarding the revolution is often used as an excuse not to hand-over arms and that if things continued at this rate Libya will not reach a solution on this matter. This is not the first time that the prime minister has publicly raised the issue of arms collection. In November last year Zidan had floated the idea of buying up illegally-held arms. At that press conference, Zidan had suggested that Libya needed to take advantage of international experience to set up a program to buy up all illegally-held arms in the country. Zidan had said that if the GNC approved his plan, the government would seek to set up a procedure whereby “arbitrators” would receive surrendered weapons from individuals and organizations, who might have been reluctant to hand over their arms to other Libyans. He did not spell out how this would work, but he may have been thinking of the system that worked in Northern Ireland, after the Good Friday peace accord, whereby the Irish Republican Army put their weapons “beyond use” under the gaze of independent observers led by a US politician Senator George Mitchell. Zidan had emphasized last November, however, that he was merely floating this as an idea for debate. He had not been proposing that the government should decide on such a move without consultation. Six-month budget Zidan said that he had only requested the approval of a six-month budget from the Congress. Libya Herald asked the prime minister if he would divulge some more details about the proposed 2014 budget, such as its size. This, it was put to him, in view of the continued oil export embargo in the east and news that the GNC Budget Finance and Planning Committee had found conflicting statements on the budget between what the Central Bank of Libya and the government were saying. Zidan only partially answered the question without giving any exact figures. He called upon the GNC to hasten the approval of his proposed budget and noted that Libya was at a stage of political debate where the mandate of the GNC was being contested and that he had asked for the minimum amount needed for the budget. — Libya Herald
