he US has waged the Western coalition's war on Libya in an attempt to evict China from the oil-rich areas of the North African country, a former US Treasury official says.
The crisis in Libya is mostly a "CIA operation and the US government is trying to get China out of Libya because China has extensive energy investments in Libya," former Assistant Secretary to US Treasury Dr. Paul Craig Roberts told Press TV.
"The US is very disturbed by the recent reports from the International Monetary Fund that China will surpass the US as the number one economic power within 5 years," Roberts added.
Since the revolution against Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi's regime began in mid-February, tens of thousands of people have been killed and injured in clashes between Libyan revolutionaries and pro-Gaddafi forces.
Many civilians have also reportedly been killed since the Western coalition unleashed a major air campaign against the Libyan regime forces on March 19 under a UN mandate namely to "protect the Libyan population."
"For the same reason Washington is focused on Syria, because in Syria the Russians have a very large naval base in which they intend to keep aircraft carriers and Washington does not want the Russians with their navy in the Mediterranean," Roberts argued.
Since the beginning of the unrest in Syria in mid-March, scores of people have been killed across the country.
"What has happened is while Washington was caught off guard by the Arab protests in Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain they quickly learned that they could use Arab protests as a cloak behind which to hide while China and Russia are evicted from the Mediterranean," the former US official went on to say.
The US' concerns about the crises in Libya and Syria have "nothing to do with humanitarian concerns. It has to do with evicting other world powers from the Mediterranean region," he concluded.