The European Union is offering to help Libya's rebels reform security forces after 42 years under a police state and collect weapons when the war ends, the EU's chief diplomat said today.

As global leaders gathered for a conference in Paris on how to assist the rebel leadership, Catherine Ashton said humanitarian aid was the immediate priority but that the EU was ready to give economic support and its expertise to prepare elections.

The "Friends of Libya" conference "is an opportunity for the international community to now reflect on the long-term job we have to help support the Libyan people and their ambition of a democratic country," Ashton told reporters.

After 42 years of dictatorship, Ashton said reforming the security forces will be one of the long-term task to help the rebel administration "deal with the number of weapons that are currently in Libya" and border management.

"This is actually quite a long-term job, because it's about making sure you have strong police forces operating in a democratic country," she said.

The EU is eager to play a role in the new Libya after Brussels was left on the sidelines as an organisation, even as France and Britain led air strikes there under the NATO umbrella.

The EU offered to deploy a military humanitarian mission to Libya at the height of the conflict to secure aid shipments, but the United Nations never called it in.

Any EU mission in the Libyan security sector risks running into competition with NATO, which has also raised the possibility of prodiving its experience in training foreign forces.

Ashton said she has talked with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and that the two organisations would coordinate any action. She stressed that any decisions would be in the hands of the UN.

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