Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi called on Tuesday for a U.N. resolution endorsing an international military campaign against Islamic State in Libya, one day after he ordered cross-border airstrikes in retaliation for the mass execution of 21 Egyptian Christians by the extremist group.
Mr. Sisi said the international community had “no other choice” but to heed the wishes of Libyans and their Western-backed government, and to join in the fight against Islamic State in Libya.
In the Egyptian leader’s interview with France’s Europe 1 radio, it wasn’t immediately clear whether he was urging a U.N. resolution endorsing the current U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State or the creation of a new, perhaps broader, anti-Islamic State bloc. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry provided no further details or clarification.
Mr. Sisi, in his comments on Tuesday, defended as an internationally acceptable act of self-defense Egypt’s air raids on Islamic State targets in the eastern city of Derna. The Monday morning raid came just hours after the release of a video purporting to show the beheadings of the 21 Egyptians.
“What happened is a crime, a monstrous terrorist crime that our children have their throats cuts in Libya and not to react,” he said. “We won’t allow them to cut off the heads of our children.”
Mr. Sisi indicated the international coalition that helped depose longtime Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 had ended its operations prematurely and opened a power vacuum in the North African nation into which radicals have rushed.
“We abandoned the Libyan people as prisoners to extremist militias,” he said.
As Mr. Sisi urged greater international involvement in the fight against Islamic State in Libya, his ally Saudi Arabia was getting set to host a meeting on Wednesday of military officials from member countries of the U.S.-led coalition to discuss the military campaign against the extremist group.
The White House also will convene on Wednesday a three-day antiterrorism summit, expected to be attended by representatives of 60 countries, including Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.
Mr. Shoukry said Monday he would meet U.N. officials during his U.S. visit to convey Egypt’s desire for a U.N.-mandated effort against Islamic State.
There is no U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the anti-Islamic State military campaign. Last September, the council unanimously approved a resolution calling on U.N. member nations to make it illegal for their citizens to recruit members for the group or travel to join it.
In a briefing for reporters on Monday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry’s chief spokesman said his country was seeking support for the view that “less radical and more radical” Islamist groups can’t be differentiated.
“They are all the same. They are coordinating on the ground between them. They share the same ideology that was crystallized by the creation of the terrorist group in 1928,” he added, referring to the year the Muslim Brotherhood was created.
Mr. Sisi has overseen a harsh crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest and oldest opposition group, since orchestrating the coup that unseated Egypt’s first freely elected president, Mohammed Morsi, in 2013.
Mr. Morsi, formerly a top Brotherhood official, is currently in jail and facing trials on a variety of charges, including espionage, treason and complicity in the killing of protesters. Egyptian and international rights groups have criticized the allegations as politically motivated.
Without publicly citing any evidence the organization was engaged in terrorism, Egypt’s military-backed regime designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in 2013. The Brotherhood has repeatedly condemned Islamic State.
Libya’s internationally-recognized government, currently seated in the eastern city of Tobruk, has welcomed Egypt’s intervention, while the moderate Islamist government that controls Tripoli has criticized it as a breach of Libyan sovereignty.
Al Ahram, the Egyptian government’s flagship newspaper, cited a spokesman for Libya’s army saying 64 militants, including three senior members, had been killed in the Egyptian airstrikes.
Reports of civilian casualties were false and being promoted by Islamic State sympathizers to “get sympathy,” the newspaper quoted the spokesman, Maj. Mohamed Hegazy, as saying.
Human Rights Watch, quoting a resident in Derna, said the Egyptian airstrikes killed six civilians, including a woman and her three children. It also called the executions of the 21 Egyptians a “war crime.”
Source: Wall Street Journal
