ATTACK ON LIBYA:THE UNITED States and France last night agreed that Nato would play a key role in the air campaign against Libya's Col Muammar Gadafy, a move aimed at easing tensions within the multinational force over who should take charge of the mission.
Presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy issued statements confirming they had agreed on how Nato’s command structures would be used and expressing satisfaction that their strikes so far had reduced Col Gadafy’s ability to use force against his own people. But the allies stopped short of explicitly endorsing Nato political leadership of the mission, which France fears could make it difficult to rally and retain support from Arab states for the operation.
In his first appearance since the bombing campaign began, Col Gadafy vowed to fight on. “We will be victorious in the end,” he told crowds at his Tripoli compound, in a speech carried live on television.
After four days of air strikes, the military command structure of the Libyan intervention force remained a source of dispute between the allies yesterday.
Britain and several other European states believe command of the UN-mandated operation should be transferred to Nato, but French foreign minister Alain Juppé said Arab countries were wary of allowing the Atlantic alliance take charge and spoke merely of Nato “support” for the mission. Turkey has also expressed misgivings about possible Nato leadership and said the air strikes had already gone beyond the terms of the UN resolution. Without unified command, the Libyan mission is currently being co-ordinated by American forces in Naples, Italy and Ramstein, in Germany but Washington is eager to hand over control for what could be a drawn-out operation.
Underlining the differences in the coalition, Italy’s foreign minister Franco Frattini said if agreement was not reached on a Nato command, Italy would resume control of the seven airbases it has made available to allied air forces.
In Paris, a foreign ministry spokeswoman said Nato could provide help when the United States scaled back its participation but added that the issue of who should run the operation was not pressing. “We have no problem with seeking help. What matters at the moment is implementing the UN resolution and for the time being, the US leadership is working,” she said.
That was at odds with signals coming from Washington, which appears eager to relinquish its military leadership role quickly. President Barack Obama said on Monday that the US would cede control of operations in Libya “in a matter of days and not in a matter of weeks”. France and Britain are considered the only states with the military capacity to take on the command role, and US defence secretary Robert Gates suggested yesterday that the mission could come under French-British control if agreement could not be secured on Nato’s role.
One compromise floated last night was that Nato could assume leadership with a general each from Paris and London at its head.
Coalition strikes against Libyan targets continued yesterday, with Libyan state television reporting that Tripoli was “under crusader enemy aerial bombardment” and that several sites had been attacked. Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said Monday’s air and missile strikes had caused “numerous” civilian casualties, especially at the “civilian airport” in Sirte.
Mr Juppé said the multinational operation could end “at any moment” if Gadafy complied with the UN resolution and put in place a ceasefire.
In Moscow, Mr Gates said he had told his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov he believed “the significant military fighting that has been going on should recede in the next few days”. But the continuing military build-up in the Mediterranean suggested the coalition was preparing for a drawn-out operation. Two French Rafale jets from the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle flew reconnaissance missions over Libya yesterday, while the US military said forces from 13 nations were moving to take part in the action.
The allies’ actions continued to draw criticism from China, which abstained in the UN vote, while Algeria called for an “immediate cessation of hostilities and foreign intervention”, saying the western-led mission was “disproportionate” in relation to the UN resolution.