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Gadaffi asked for Air Corps to train pilots

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  • Gadaffi asked for Air Corps to train pilots

    Gadaffi asked for training despite IRA guns

    By Fergus Black
    Wednesday December 30 2009

    MUAMMAR Gadaffi's Libya had the gall to make approaches to see if the Irish Air Corps would train their pilots -- while it was busily supplying tons of weaponry to the IRA.

    Department of Foreign Affairs files show that the cultural attache of the Libyan Embassy in London raised the possibility with former Fianna Fail TD Sean Sherwin. This was just six years after Mr Gadaffi's regime had openly sympathised with the IRA and supplied five tons of weapons seized off the Irish coast on the gun-running ship Claudia by the Naval Service.

    Despite that seizure, weapons were reaching the IRA including RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades used against British armoured vehicles, barracks and police stations in the North. And in the early 1980s the Libyans sent more weaponry including Semtex explosive and over 1,000 Kalashnikov rifles to the IRA.

    But their 1979 approach to train Libyan pilots in Ireland was ruled out by the Air Corps. A file pointed out that the Air Corps had stated it would not be possible to train pilots from foreign countries in the near future.

    Meanwhile, moves by Aer Lingus to train Egyptian air force pilots in instrument calibration let to a flurry of letters between government departments over the possible political implications of the project.

    In a letter to the Minister for Transport and Tourism Padraig Faulkner in January 1978, Foreign Affairs Minister Michael O'Kennedy said he had recently learned that the airline had taken up a request made to them through Rolls Royce and Hawker Siddeley Aviation to become involved in the training project.

    "While there are clearly some political implications involved in this project I feel on consideration that I should not raise any objection to it from a political viewpoint." This was partly because of general developments in the Middle East and also because the project would also be of use to civil aviation in Egypt and would therefore not be an exclusively military project.
    http://www.independent.ie/national-n...s-1992440.html
    You will never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race

  • #2
    Originally posted by Fireplace View Post
    Department of Foreign Affairs files show that the cultural attache of the Libyan Embassy in London raised the possibility with former Fianna Fail TD Sean Sherwin
    Why on earth would a cultural attaché be discussing defense issues

    Then again, the position of cultural attaché was one of many guises!!

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    • #3
      We did train their civilian air traffic controllers in shannon during the early eighties which lead to some funny coloured ( for the time ) kids running around and a few fights amongst locals and non locals which helped perpetrate the label of stab city for limerick. It was really the libyans fault for trying to pick up local women.

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      • #4

        He also asked for the SAS to help train his special forces too.

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