London: The UK government has finally announced that the cost of its military involvement in the Libya war so far is £260 million.
In a written statement to the MPs, Defence Secretary Liam Fox disclosed that the estimated cost of “the six-month, NATO-led campaign was in the region of £120m”.
Fox went on to say that “another £140m will have to be spent replacing missiles and other munitions if the mission continued at the same rate.”
Liam Fox also told the MPs that the Treasury admitted to meet the Libya costs from the reserve.
The announcement comes as the UK taxpayers increasingly press the government to bring the Libya war at an end, speculating that the interference by the UK has placed a heavy burden on the British taxpayers who are struggling with the government’s harsh spending cuts.
Since the coalition forces began their airstrikes over the country, aiming to oust the Libyan ruler and change the regime, several speculations have been made, rejecting the government’s on and off shocking estimations.
Chancellor George Osborne formerly estimated that the cost of the country’s interference over Libya would only be “in the order of tens of millions of pounds, not hundreds of millions.”
Meanwhile Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander declared that the cost would run into hundreds of millions of pounds.
Ministers have strongly insisted that the government took the cash from the Treasury reserve and not the defence budget.
This is while analysts believe that, instead of claiming to save the lives of Libyan civilians by spending a lot of money in the war, the British government can instead use this amount of money on the Education Maintenance Alowance (EMA), or bringing care homes back into public ownership, or cutting VAT, or even keeping public sector pensions.
Right before issuing his statement, Fox claimed that the government had to use more expensive precision weaponry in order to minimize civilian casualties in Libya.
“Many people at home will be thinking ‘Why is it always Britain that has to do this?’ and I think it is important that Britain does contribute, but I think we want to see some more of our NATO allies, particularly the European NATO allies, do more of the campaign [and] more of the fighting,” he said.
British taxpayers have time after time expressed their anger against the government’s war policies; the public strongly urged the government to spend the budget wasted on the wars on Libya and Afghanistan, on the public services formerly cut due to the country’s economic deficit.
Along with the British public, the army chiefs also spoke out about the imposed defence cuts. The head of the Army, General Sir Peter Wall, also joined his Navy and RAF counterparts in questioning the military capability in the country’s future tougher economic condition.
Defending the costs, Foreign Secretary William Hague said, “Whatever we are spending on the operations in Libyan it doesn’t cost anything like as much as the cost of a humanitarian catastrophe.”
Meanwhile, Barry Gardiner MP for Brent North urged a debate on the country’s military operations over Libya.
“This week we have found out the war in Libya is costing a quarter of a billion pounds; this week we have found that the military leadership of this country believe that our armed forces are overstretched in engaging in that endeavour,” he said.
Stating that the UK forces are acting as the military wing for the Libyan revolutionary forces in a civil war, Gardiner asked, “Can we now have a debate to find out why it is that British troops are not enforcing the ceasefire on both sides?”
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