The EU is firming up plans for a military mission to Libya in order to compete for influence with foreign powers there, according to a leaked paper seen by EUobserver.

According to a report penned by Nicolaj Nielsen and Andrew Rettman "an internal paper from the EU foreign service, dated 1 July, said: 'Libya's peace process required "large-scale disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) of combatants as well as a fundamental security sector reform (SSR)'".

The paper added: "In this context, an EU military CSDP [Common Security and Defence Policy] engagement should ... be considered in order not to leave the entire field of activity in the military domain to third states. In the long term and when conditions allow, a military CSDP engagement with a mandate to support the SSR process in the military domain [should] be considered."

The paper did not name the third states in what it called the "competitive situation" in Libya. But Chad, Egypt, Jordan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates have all become involved in Libya's civil war.

And the EU paper did allude to Turkey, when it said one "third country" had "continued denial of inspections" of suspected arms shipments to Libya in violation of a UN embargo.