Syria in line after Libya

Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Monday declared the end of Nato military operations in Tripoli and stressed that there should not be a similar intervention in Syria. But Nato is actually leaving Libya at the behest of the US, which wants to concentrate on Syria and Iran, the business paper Il Sole 24 Ore suspects: "Libya has long since become just a minor intervention in a far bigger exchange deal. The big game is no longer in Tripoli but on the Gulf. The goal is to manoeuvre the Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad into a corner and isolate Syria's strongest ally, Iran. ... The US is leaving the fate of Libya in the hands of the Europeans and the Arabs. It has other interests to defend. It wants to install a new 'security architecture' in a region that forms the front line with Iran and contains 60 percent of the world's oil reserves. This is why it is boosting its presence in Kuwait and intensifying its military relations with the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council."

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More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Security Policy / Crises / War, » U.S., » Iran, » Libya, » Syria
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