Word: british
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...textbook coup. At 3 a.m., shortly before the most faithful Moslems would answer the call to early morning prayers, columns of trucks loaded with troops rolled through Tripoli, spearheaded by British-made Centurion tanks. Swiftly, soldiers surrounded army headquarters, the security police building, the Royal Palace and the national radio station. Teleprinters in the national news agency fell silent. The borders were sealed tight, and at the airports, controllers got orders to suspend all air traffic indefinitely...
There were other puzzling aspects. While Radio Tripoli proclaimed "a revolutionary Libya, a socialist Libya," representatives of the 40-odd foreign oil companies (38 of them American) were assured on two separate occasions that their investments were safe. U.S., British and French diplomats heard promises of friendship and good faith. At the British airbase at El Adem, near Tobruk, and at the huge, $100 million Wheelus airbase, manned by some 3,000 Americans, the commanders tactfully suspended training flights, and the new regime requested that the flights remain suspended "temporarily." In every case, the spokesmen for the new regime were...
Urban Bedouin. What is at stake is a sparsely populated nation more than twice the size of Texas and even more desolate in appearance. The Turks ruled Libya from the mid-16th century until 1912, when Italy gained the upper hand. The British administered the country from the end of World War II until independence in 1951. Once one of the poorest of Arab lands, Libya has become one of the wealthiest since vast reserves of oil were discovered a decade ago. In 1960, Libya's exports consisted of such commodities as esparto grass, olive oil, sponges and camels...
...Revolutionary Council confirmed that its troops had occupied Benghazi, the principal city of Cyrenaica in eastern Libya and stronghold of King Idris and his Senussi sect. The continuation of the curfew suggested that the rebels might be encountering opposition, possibly from the more than 6,000-man British-trained Cyrenaican militia or the national police force, which is almost twice the size of the 10,000-man Libyan army. Radio Tripoli was heard urging rebel troops to seize the "police helicopters" and to "be ready to counter any internal and external acts against the republic...
...oath of office to Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia, the new Premier, impetuously raising Busia's arm in a fighter's victory gesture. Except for that forgivable breach of decorum, Ghana ushered in the second republic in its brief history with pomp and pageantry worthy of its former British rulers...