Countries targeted by Daesh (ISIS) will probably soon have to crush the group in Libya, France's prime minister said Friday, as rival Libyan factions neared signing a United Nations-backed unity agreement. French officials have been warning for more than a year that the political void in the North African state, which faces European Union members Malta and Italy across the Mediterranean Sea, is creating favorable conditions for Islamist groups. The longer a national unity government is not in place, the easier it will be for Daesh to take root in the country, French officials said. "We are living with the terrorist threat. We have a common enemy, Daesh, which we must defeat and destroy in Iraq and Syria and probably tomorrow in Libya," Valls told Europe 1 radio. An aide in the prime minister's office said Valls meant that all those targeted by Daesh, including France, would need to fight the group. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday that Russia had no plans to carry out airstrikes in Libya against Daesh. "This is not in our plans. We have had no requests of this kind from the government of Libya ... and there is no government of Libya as such," Lavrov told a news conference during a visit to Italy. Daesh in Libya has between 2,000 and 3,000 fighters and is the only affiliate known to have received support and guidance from the extremist group's stronghold in Syria and Iraq, U.N. experts have said. The North African oil producer is in chaos, with two rival governments, each backed by armed factions, hesitating over signing a previously negotiated agreement for a unity government. The two sides said Friday they had set a date of Dec. 16 to finalize the U.N.-brokered deal. Paris has already redeployed some 3,500 troops, previously used to intervene in its former colony Mali in 2013, across West Africa, and has established a base about 75 kilometers from Libya's southern border, to form a counterterrorism force. French military aircraft flew reconnaissance and intelligence missions over Libya in November, including areas controlled by Daesh. "There is no time to waste now," a senior Western diplomat said. "If we can't have a government quickly, then we will start looking at measures that we can put in place to ensure Libya does not go further down the road of chaos and become a sanctuary for militants. If a deal is not sealed we will have to ensure our own security." The diplomat said a meeting in Rome Sunday aimed at making that clear to all sides and warning them of possible consequences if they continued to stall political progress. Former British premier Tony Blair said Friday the Western intervention to depose Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 may have saved the country from even further chaos, despite ongoing bloodshed. Blair also defended his working relationship with Gadhafi, and revealed that he had telephoned the former dictator urging him to cede power shortly before he was ousted and slain in October 2011. "My concern was not for his safety. My concern was to get him out of the situation so that a peaceful transition could take place," he said while giving evidence at the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. Despite his proximity to Gadhafi, Blair said that "once the Arab Spring began, it was clear" that his regime would collapse. He also said he "was not going to criticize" former French President Nicolas Sarkozy for spearheading the international campaign that led to Gadhafi's downfall. "Libya is obviously in a state of instability and chaos and it has caused huge problems for all the region. It is a security problem for us actually here," Blair said.
