Coalition forces launched a seventh day of air strikes against the regime of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi yesterday, but France and Britain insisted a diplomatic solution to the crisis could be reached.
After France’s military chief had predicted the NATO-led campaign would last only “weeks,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France and Britain were preparing a “political and diplomatic” solution.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague also said he expected NATO to take full command of military operations in Libya “within a matter of days,” after the alliance agreed to enforce a no-fly zone.
He denied the international community was divided over the UN-sanctioned zone and ceasefire, aimed at protecting civilians from Qaddafi’s forces, and said a meeting in London next week would make that clear.
Referring to the London talks on Tuesday, Sarkozy said: “There will certainly be a Franco-British initiative to clearly show the solution is not only military, but also political and diplomatic.”
NATO agreed to patrol the no-fly zone as British and French warplanes targeted Qaddafi’s ground forces in the strategic eastern town of Ajdabiya.
“We are taking action as part of a broad international effort to protect civilians against the Qaddafi regime,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.
He underlined that NATO’s role was limited to enforcing the no-fly zone, but a senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity in Washington, said the 28-member alliance reached a “political agreement” to command all other operations aimed at protecting civilians — meaning strikes against Qaddafi’s ground forces.
The news came as anti-aircraft fire raked the Libyan skies overnight, with at least three explosions shaking the capital and its eastern suburb of Tajura, journalists reported.
At least one blast was heard from the center of the city, while others came from Tajura, home to military bases, a journalist reported.
British Defence Secretary Liam Fox said yesterday that Tornado jets launched missiles overnight at Libyan armored vehicles in Ajdabiya, 860km from Tripoli.
A French fighter jet also destroyed an artillery battery overnight outside Ajdabiya French defense chief Admiral Edouard Guillaud said, adding that the allied operation would not drag on for months.
“I doubt that it will be [over] in days, I think it will be weeks and I hope it won’t be in months,” he told the France Info radio station.
Rebels fighting to retake Ajdabiya, which sits at a junction on roads leading from rebel strongholds Benghazi and Tobruk, were being held off by loyalist armored vehicles at the gates of the town.
On Thursday, a Qaddafi fighter plane that had dared to flout the no-fly zone was swiftly punished when a French fighter destroyed the jet after it landed in Misrata, about 214km east of Tripoli.
Fighting also raged in rebel-held Misrata. A doctor treating the wounded at a hospital said attacks by Qaddafi forces since March 18 “have killed 109 people and wounded 1,300 others, 81 of whom are in serious condition.”
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