NEW DELHI, India Libyans have launched a campaign to recruit “volunteers” for the Libyan army from among Indians. Hundreds of Indians are flocking to Tripoli’s embassy in response to newspaper advertisements.

India’s Foreign Secretary, Mr. N.P.Jain told United Press International that Libya had placed advertisements in newspaper around the country seeking recruits for its army from among “Arab citizens and Moslem citizens.”

Libyan Diplomat however, claimed that the offer was not aimed at Indians and no recruit has been taken on.

While the Libyan Peoples Bureau the name Tripoli gives its foreign missions was closed Friday for the Moslem day of rest, two officials reached by telephone vehemently denied the advertisements sought military recruits.

“Nobody has been recruited for Libyan army,” said one of the officials, both of whom declined to identify themselves.

The second official said the advertisements were seeking civilian workers. “As in the past, a delegation has come (from Libya) to recruit cheap Indian laborers,” he said.

About one dozen Indians stood Friday morning near the gate of the building hoping for job interviews. A guard said he had been turning away people all morning, telling them to return Saturday.

The local residents said hundreds of men were turning up at the mission daily since Monday and waiting in a line that snaked across the street and wound around a park opposite the building, located in a fashionable south Delhi residential colony.

“I saw about 150 to 200 people gathered around the Libyan Embassy,” said a young woman. “Everybody was just hanging around, talking together, waiting. I thought there were some routine job interviews or something.”

Applicants said they had traveled from such places as the southern cities of Madras and Hyderabad and from Meerut and Aligarh in northern India after reading advertisements in local newspapers seeking “volunteers” for Libyan army jobs paying as much as $800 per month,

“There is a big rush here as hundreds of people are coming here daily for the job,” said Mohammad Ibrahim, who added that he had been waiting since Monday for an interview.

 

“They need more than 40,000 people for their army,” said Ibrahim, who traveled about 1,120 miles to New Delhi from Madras after hearing about the offer from a friend, “I will keep coming till my tum.”

Another applicant said he had read the advertisement in the New Delhi based Nai Duniya newspaper, an Urdu-language daily popular among Moslems in the capital and neighboring Uttar Pradesh state,

He said the advertisement sought “able-bodied” Moslem men for the Libyan army.

Many of those waiting for interviews said they were unaware of the confrontation last month between Libyan forces and an American naval task force that crossed Col. Moammar Khadafy’s “Line of Death” in the disputed Gulf of Sidra.

I don’t care about their relations. I want the job,” said Mohammad Ali, a resident of Uttar Pradesh.

Article extracted from this publication >> April 18, 1986