Libya to Withdraw Troops on Egypt Border as Economic Woes, Chad War Take Toll

Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, in a move believed to be motivated by mounting economic difficulties and his army’s debacle in Chad, announced Monday that he is ordering the withdrawal of all Libyan troops deployed along the Egyptian border.

“I hereby declare the withdrawal of all military forces from along the Libyan-Egyptian artificial borders,” Kadafi said in a speech in the Libyan coastal city of Tobruk. “I want to emphasize to the Egyptian people and army that the Libyan eastern military zone will finally be closed.”

Kadafi gave no timetable for the pullback, nor did he say how many troops would be involved. But Egyptian intelligence sources estimate that Libya has about 40,000 troops--more than half of its armed forces--deployed along the 650-mile-long frontier.

Kadafi’s announcement, delivered with characteristic bravado in a speech marking the 18th anniversary of the withdrawal of British military forces from Tobruk, was the latest and most surprising of several recent gestures of rapprochement between Libya and Egypt.

Earlier this month, Egypt returned to Libya four MIG-23 jet fighters that were said to have been forced by bad weather and low fuel to make emergency landings at an Egyptian air force base near the border.

Libya reciprocated a few days later by releasing and repatriating 36 Egyptians held in Libyan jails.

Saudis Act as Mediators

Both gestures were taken in response to what Egyptian officials described as diplomatic efforts by Saudi Arabia to mediate an easing of tensions between Egypt and Libya, whose animosity goes back at least 15 years to the first of several unsuccessful attempts by Kadafi to merge the two nations.

Border clashes erupted into open warfare in 1977, and tensions along the frontier have remained high, although Egypt rejected an American plan for a joint attack on Libya in 1985.

In his speech, broadcast live by Libyan television, Kadafi promised to withdraw his forces from the border unconditionally, “without asking anything in return from the Egyptian side.” He also offered to “accept any verification commission or any observer or monitor” to verify that “this region is completely evacuated by military forces.”

There was no immediate Egyptian government reaction. But a senior military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Egypt had advance notice of the announcement but remained intensely cynical about the motives behind it.

“We were expecting it. Kadafi is in a very bad situation now. He is isolated and Libya is in the middle of an economic crisis,” the source said. He added that the pullback should “lighten the burden” on Libya’s armed forces and allow Kadafi to focus his attention on his border dispute with Chad.

Libya suffered a serious reversal in that conflict last year when Chadian forces routed Libyan troops occupying northern Chad, inflicting heavy casualties and capturing an enormous cache of weapons from the retreating Libyans.

According to Egyptian estimates, Libya still has about 10,000 troops dug into the Aozou Strip, a contested ribbon of land running the length of the Libyan-Chadian border. But the heavy losses, as well as the economic burden of sustaining the conflict with Chad, is said by Egyptian intelligence sources to have lowered morale and fomented discontent within the Libyan armed forces.

Increasingly Isolated

At the same time, Egypt’s re-entry into the Arab fold and the emergence of a solid Arab front against Iran, which Libya until recently supported, has increased Kadafi’s regional isolation.

“Taken together, all these factors seem to be forcing Kadafi to moderate his behavior,” a Western diplomat said. “There’s no profit for him right now in being the bad boy of the Arab world.”

Pressure from Saudi Arabia also has been a major factor in Kadafi’s transformation. Taking advantage of his mounting difficulties, the Saudis have sought to reconcile Kadafi with his Arab neighbors in hopes of weaning him away from Iran.

While promising not to interfere in Egyptian internal affairs, Kadafi balanced his Tobruk speech with a denunciation of Egypt for “abandoning” the Arab world and committing “treason” when it signed its peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

But, he added, there is “absolutely no sense in the presence of Libyan military forces along the Egyptian border, because it is not our intention to hang Egypt by force from inside, or to force it to leave the Camp David stables by force.”