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Libya: North Africa
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Africa is due to chair the next session of the commission on a rotational basis, and Libya was nominated by the African regional group. Libya's nomination was confirmed at the recently concluded inaugural summit of the new African Union. The commission will begin its annual session in March 2003.
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Libya is located in northern Africa. Libya is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, Tunisia and Algeria to the west, Niger and Chad to the south, and Egypt and Sudan to the east.
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The Phoenicians were the first to establish trading posts in Libya, when the merchants of Tyre (in present-day Lebanon) developed commercial relations with the Berber tribes and made treaties with them to ensure their cooperation in the exploitation of raw materials. By the 5th century BC, Carthage, the greatest of the Phoenician colonies, had extended its hegemony across much of North Africa, where a distinctive civilisation, known as Punic, came into being. Punic settlements on the Libyan coast included Oea (Tripoli), Labdah ( Leptis Magna) and Sabratha. All these were in an area that was later called Tripolis, or "Three Cities". Libya's current-day capital Tripoli takes its name from this.
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Tuesday, 3 April, 2007: Reports that Libya is supporting a Shi’ite rebellion against the Yemenite government are unlikely to be true, analysts say. The rebellion, lead by the Al-Houthi clan, was quashed in 2004. However, there has been an upsurge in northern Yemen over the past couple of months. Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, said he was not convinced Libya was helping the rebels. This would be “out of character” for Libya, he said. [The Media Line]
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Libya falls into three main administrative and geographical regions—Tripolitania in the west, Fazzan in the southwest, and Cyrenaica in the east. Tripolitania in turn can be divided into three zones. In the north is a low-lying coastal plain called the Jifarah, which, although mainly arid, has several irrigated areas. It ... includes the city of Tripoli. South of the Jifarah is a mountainous zone (highest altitude: c.2,500 ft/760 m) known as the Jabal; it is mostly arid and barren but has scattered areas of cultivation. South of the Jabal is an upland plateau, largely desert, but crossed by a string of oases in the south.
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Previously, Libya signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in November 2001 and ratified it in January 2004. In 1996, it had signed the Treaty of Pelindaba, which established a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Africa. Besides previously secret nuclear sites disclosed in late 2003, Libya possesses a Soviet-supplied 10MW research reactor in Tajura. With the lifting of UN sanctions in 1998, Russia renewed its nuclear cooperation with Libya, providing funding for renovations to the Tajura nuclear complex.
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