Independence for Libya?
The Bevin-Sforza proposals for the former Italian colonies had one merit—they offered a compromise which might well be acceptable to two-thirds of the General Assembly. When the Assembly rejected them the proposals passed into limbo and the only thing to do Was to start again from first principles. What are first principles, as far as the former Italian colonies arc concerned ? The genuine Italian interest in Tripolitania and Eritrea is certainly one, and the incapacity of Eritrea and Somaliland to govern themselves is equally certainly another. If the desire of the inhabitants of Libya for independence must now be reckoned a third, that is largely the fault of the United Nations and the Council of Foreign Ministers, who have argued so long and so fruitlessly over other solutions. In the last week, more as a result of exhaustion than of-reasoning, the United Nations appears to have come to accept the idea of Libyan independence within the near future ; the only matter for debate is the rate at which inde- pendence shall be achieved and the means by which authority shall be transferred to effective local administrations. The idea of an international commission to watch over the transfer has some theoretical attractions, but in practice it is more likely to provide a microcosm on Libyan soil of the Lake Success wrangles, and there- fore it would be better for the hand-over to be made direct by the present authorities. Whether a Libyan State, once it emerges, will be able to stand on its own feet, may well be doubted. No part of North Africa is so ill-equipped in men, wealth and experience to live alone, and it lacks even internal homogeneity. The one certain result of Libyan independence, as the French well _realise, would be to aggravate the nationalist unrest which is endemic throughout Tunis, Algeria and Morocco.
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