NATO Defense Ministers Plan to Raise Pressure on Qaddafi Regime
NATO plans to step up pressure on Muammar Qaddafi’s regime as the alliance gains momentum in its air campaign over Libya, underscored by daytime strikes yesterday that leveled parts of Qaddafi’s compound.
Defense ministers of the 28-member alliance are meeting today at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels to discuss Libya. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said this week he’ll ask for a broader effort after the alliance added attack helicopters to its arsenal striking Libyan loyalist forces.
“NATO has raised the pressure on Libya enormously,” Jan Techau, head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Brussels, said in an interview. “The shift to using NATO helicopters and warplanes flying daytime air strikes shows how confident the alliance has become.”
As a four-month effort by rebels and the United Nations- mandated air strikes gains pace, Rasmussen is seeking to push the debate toward planning for a post-Qaddafi Libya. The Libyan leader, speaking publicly for the first time in three weeks yesterday, expressed defiance in an audio broadcast on state TV.
“We are stronger than their missiles, stronger than their planes,” Qaddafi said, as NATO warplanes increasingly focus their attacks on the Libyan capital.
Last Gates Meeting
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived for his final meetings with NATO counterparts before leaving office this month. The U.S. Senate will hold a confirmation hearing this week for President Barack Obama’s nominee to succeed Gates, Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta.
Gates arrived in Brussels after a four-day farewell visit to U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Air strikes in Libya in the past month have pushed Qaddafi loyalists out of the western port city of Misrata, which is in rebel hands, and aided some rebel gains in the Berber highlands in the west. Rebels this week said they seized control of the western mountain town of Yefren.
Qaddafi has suffered defections. Libyan generals, two colonels and a major defected to rebel forces at the end of May, bringing the total number of Libyan army officers who have left Qaddafi to 120, Libya’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Abdel Rahman Shalgham, said on May 30.
To contact the reporters on this story: Patrick Donahue in Berlin at at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net; Viola Gienger in Brussels at vgienger@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net
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