Daily Times

BRUSSELS: NATO will on Thursday consider a bigger role for the alliance in Libya to help a new unity government push back the growing Islamic State threat, but some allies want the focus to be on a naval mission to stop refugees teeming into Europe.

Just three days after world powers met in Vienna to offer aid to the U.N.-backed unity government in Tripoli, NATO foreign ministers will discuss how the alliance’s ships in the Mediterranean could stop arms reaching militants.

“NATO has a clear mandate that we should stand ready to support the new government in Libya if so requested,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said before the meeting. “We are not addressing any potential combat operation,” he said.

Libya remains highly sensitive for NATO following its 2011 air campaign that helped rebels topple Muammar Gaddafi but then saw the country descend into anarchy.

Allies are also divided over whether NATO should be training a new Libyan military, targeting arms smugglers or stopping flows of migrants across the Mediterranean as calmer summer weather approaches, something Italy and Spain support.

“We have to define how we coordinate European Union and NATO efforts to reduce migrant flows,” said Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, who just returned from Libya.

Many in NATO are looking to its so-called Active Endeavour counter-terrorism mission in the Mediterranean, which was set up after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, to switch roles and link up with an EU naval mission.