Brussels - Nato said on Monday that it is concerned about the possibility that thousands of portable surface-to-air missiles, previously in Muammar Gaddafi’s army, are missing in Libya.
“It is a matter of concern if stockpiles of weapons are not properly controlled and monitored,” Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.
He was responding to a report that thousands of SAM-7 shoulder-launched, surface-to-air missiles allegedly disappeared after the defeat of loyalist forces by Libyan rebels supported by Nato air strikes.
On Sunday, the German news magazine Der Spiegel said that during a confidential briefing on September 26 for German lawmakers, Nato’s top military officer, Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, said the alliance had lost track of at least 10 000 surface-to-air missiles from Libyan military depots.
The article cited Di Paola as saying he fears the missiles could turn up anywhere - “in Kenya or in Kunduz” (a province in Afghanistan) - and that they could potentially pose a “serious danger to civil aviation”.
A spokesperson for Di Paola in Brussels said he could not confirm the report.
But Fogh Rasmussen said that since Nato did not have any troops on the ground it was the responsibility of the post-Gaddafi leadership - the National Transitional Council - to ensure that all weapons stocks are properly controlled and monitored. “Individual allies are in contact with the NTC to make sure they address this issue properly,” he said.
Fogh Rasmussen was speaking ahead of a meeting of Nato defence ministers on Wednesday and Thursday, during which the operation over Libya and the war in Afghanistan are expected to figure prominently.
The United States and other Western nations have been trying to reduce the global stock of portable missiles, fearing they could fall into the hands of terrorists. The small, easily concealable SAM-7s are considered obsolete by modern military standards but could pose a threat to civilian airliners or helicopters.
Weighing just 14kg and only 1.4m long, the 1960s-era missile can reach an altitude of over 3 000m.
Thousands have been used in wars in the Middle East, Latin America, Central Asia and former Yugoslavia. US and allied aircraft and helicopters have been damaged or downed by the missiles in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A senior Nato diplomat said the United States was particularly concerned about the possibility the weapons would end up in the “wrong hands”.
Washington is working closely with the National Transitional Council “to make sure that these weapons are controlled and put under lock and key”, the diplomat on condition of anonymity in compliance with standing regulations.
A top Nato military officer said that “even the notion that these missiles are our there is being taken very, very seriously indeed”.
“We are looking where those munitions have been throughout the air campaign, or where they may have gone to,” said the officer, who also could not be named under alliance rules. - Sapa-AP