Libya ex-PM: West has abandoned his country

Libya's former prime minister Mahmud Jibril on Saturday expressed concern that the West had abandoned his country after the collapse of Moamer Kadhafi's regime. "It is a fatal mistake to abandon Libya", Jibril said at a forum organised by public policy institute the German Marshall Fund of the United States. "When the regime collapsed, the state collapsed as well. And when the regime collapsed, everyone disappeared." Jibril stepped down last October after serving as interim premier under the rebels' National Transitional Council. Libya, with only embryonic state institutions, is going through a delicate post-conflict period, and the unilateral proclamation of independence by figures in eastern Libya has revived fears of a partition of the country. Western countries also worry about the influence of radical Islamists in Libya. The EU's foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, who attended the forum, disagreed with Jibril's characterization, saying development assistance "is never fast enough, and there's never any doubt we can do more and do it better, but the commitment is absolutely there."