Word: sidra
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...stockpiled $12 billion worth of mainly Soviet-supplied military equipment that some analysts fear could be the underpinning for a future Soviet rapid deployment force in the Middle East. Last August two Libyan jets fired upon (and were destroyed) by U.S. F-14 Tomcats over the Gulf of Sidra. Most important, Gaddafi is in the forefront of those Arabs who oppose the Camp David accords. That makes him an automatic opponent of any Egyptian leader, including Hosni Mubarak, who intends to continue Sadat's peace initiative. Says a British analyst: "There is an irrationality in Gaddafi's makeup...
...least twelve hours before U.S. F-14 fighters shot down two Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra, the Western White House of Ronald Reagan was alert to the possibility of an incident. By Wednesday, more than 40 Soviet-made SU-22s swarmed up from Libyan airfields to probe the U.S. Navy task force on maneuvers. There was even a subtle Soviet endorsement for the Libyan flights.The Soviet destroyer Kashin, which was only a few hundred yards away, trained its guns on ships in the task force, a direct violation of the safety-at-seas treaty signed...
...operation: a two-day "open-ocean missile exercise" in one of the less crowded regions of the Mediterranean. At dawn Tuesday, while the bulk of the task force stood at least 100 miles off the African coastline, two destroyers slipped into the northern reaches of the Gulf of Sidra, with the mission of patrolling the southern perimeter of the exercise and watching for stray missiles. As Washington was purposefully aware, the dispatch of the two ships was a sensitive move: the Gulf of Sidra, albeit in contravention of prevailing international agreements, is claimed by Libya, a country the U.S. considers...
...incident, explaining, "There could not have been a provocation because the exercises were in international waters." Provocation is, of course, a loaded diplomatic term. There is no doubt that the site of the U.S. action was a challenge to Gaddafi's assertion that he controlled the Gulf of Sidra and that staging the exercise there had been intentional. When asked whether the naval exercise was meant as a lesson to Libya, one State Department official replied: "Look...
Particularly irritating to successive U.S. Administrations has been Gaddafi's interpretation of maritime law. The U.S. claims only three miles of ocean as its territorial waters, while Gaddafi insists on a twelve-mile limit. But since 1973, he has also claimed the waters of the Gulf of Sidra, which indents about a third of the Libyan coastline, as an internal sea. In some cases, a nation's sovereignty over a body of water is indeed recognized by international agreement, provided that the mouth of the bay or gulf concerned is no wider than 24 miles; the mouth...