European Union foreign and defense ministers will meet late Monday in Luxembourg to discuss a plan to send security personnel to Tripoli to help train police and border guards for Libya’s new unity government.
The security mission will only go ahead if requested by the Libyan Government of National Accord. Its first phase is to be restricted just to the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
There is a growing urgency for Libya to be stabilized, with anxiety mounting that people-smugglers will exploit the chaos in the country and as many as 270,000 migrants may seek to travel across the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy this year. That would prompt a new phase in a migration crisis roiling Europe.
Western fears are rising also about the expansion of an affiliate of the Islamic State terror group in Libya. U.S. officials told VOA they estimate the affiliate now has 6,000 fighters, mainly Tunisians and sub-Saharan Africans.
The Libyan government has not given the green-light for the security mission.