No U.S. Military Role in Libya, Trump Says, Rejecting Italy’s Pleas
"A divided country, and in conflict, would make civility worse." In his scripted opening remarks, Mr. Trump thanked Italy’s leaders "for your leadership on seeking stabilization in Libya,
and for your crucial efforts to deny ISIS a foothold in the Mediterranean," adding, "You fought hard." Ansar al-Shariah, an affiliate of ISIS — the Islamic State extremist group, based in Syria and Iraq — has been operating in Libya since 2012.
Mediterranean said that We need a stable and unified Libya,
Mr. Trump’s comments came during a White House news conference with Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni of Italy,
who implored the United States to step up its "critical" involvement in Libya, a former Italian colony.
And that role will come to an end at a certain point." The conflict in Libya — which began with the killing of the country’s longtime dictator, Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi, in 2011 — has divided the desert nation into warring regions, with Islamic State-linked fighters dominating the western part of the country.
President Trump said on Thursday that he would not give the American military a direct role in helping stabilize war-ravaged
Libya, rejecting years of pleading by Italy for more assistance in stemming African migrant traffic into Europe.
The meeting on Thursday was Mr. Trump’s first with Mr. Gentiloni,
and took place a month before the president’s planned visit to Sicily for a Group of 7 summit meeting, a gathering of the world’s seven most developed economies.
But the president — who was not wearing an earpiece
that would have allowed him to understand Mr. Gentiloni’s challenge, issued in Italian — quickly contradicted his guest.