逆风笑图片:Libya war: No carrots, only sticks for Gadhaf...

来源：百度文库 编辑：九乡新闻网 时间：2024/04/28 07:53:37

Libya war: No carrots, only sticks for Gadhafi

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2011-5-31 08:29
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev walk to the Villa Le Cercle restaurant at the G8 summit in Deauville, France, Friday, May 27, 2011. G8 leaders, in a two-day meeting, will discuss the Internet, aid for North African states and ways in which to end the conflict in Libya.




Libya NATO warplanes struck Moammar Gadhafi's compound in Tripoli on Saturday, as the new rebel administration warned it was fast running out of money because countries that promised financial aid have not come through.


Ali Tarhouni, the rebel finance minister, complained that many countries that pledged aid have instead sent a string of businessmen looking for contracts from the oil-rich country.


Tarhouni recently returned to Benghazi, the rebel bastion, from a trip overseas to drum up aid that included a visit to Rome where the 22-nation Contract Group on Libya promised to set up a fund to speedily help finance the rebel administration.


Tarhouni praised France, which was the driving force behind the U.N. no-fly zone. But "other than that, everybody is just talking," he said. "So far, nothing has come through and I am fast running out of cash."


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2011-5-31 08:29
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, left, shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan during a bilateral meeting at the G8 summit in Deauville, France, Friday, May 27, 2011. G8 leaders, in a two-day meeting, will discuss the Internet, aid for North African states and ways in which to end the conflict in Libya.


Meanwhile, nearly two dozen Libyan soldiers, including a colonel and other officers, fled their country in two small boats and took refuge in neighboring Tunisia, where thousands fleeing the fighting in Libya have taken refuge.


A person who met with some of them says they fled rebel-held Misrata, arriving at Ketf port, near Ben Guerdane, on the Tunisian side of the border. The person who met with them Saturday asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. The group turned over their weapons to the Tunisian Army.


The official TAP news agency said 22 military, some ranking officers, arrived Friday in boats carrying a dozen civilians, two with bullet wounds.


Three dissident officers from Moammar Gadhafi's army reached Tunisia in a boat May 15.


Also Saturday, an alliance spokesman said NATO fighter jets struck Gadhafi's Bab al-Aziziyah compound in Tripoli in the early hours Saturday. He said the Libyan leader was not a target and there was no way to know if he was there at the time of the attack.


The spokesman said that around noon a vehicle storage area in the same area was hit.


The strike sent a shuddering boom through Tripoli and rattled windows. Such a daylight attack is fairly unusual since NATO began its aerial attacks over Libya three months ago.


Airstrikes over the past week have pounded the large barracks area that lies close to the Gadhafi compound. The same compound was badly damaged by U.S. warplanes 25 years ago in response to a bombing that had killed two U.S. servicemen at a German disco.


Saturday's airstrike came after leaders at a summit of the Group of Eight world powers reiterated that Gadhafi had to leave power.


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A plume of smoke rises to the sky after an air strike in Tripoli, Libya, on Saturday, May 28, 2011.


Russia, a leading critic of the NATO bombing campaign and one-time Gadhafi ally offered to mediate a deal for the Libyan leader to leave the country.


Speaking at the summit in Deauville, France, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, said Friday he was sending an envoy to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi immediately to start negotiating, and that talks with the Libyan government could take place later.


National Transitional Council head Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said Saturday the rebels would accept negotiations led by anyone willing to find a solution - as long as it requires the departure of Gadhafi and his sons.


Speaking to reporters in Benghazi, Abdul-Jalil said the transition to democracy would take at most one year after Gadhafi's removal from power. He also said the council had decided to ban all current members "from running for any positions in the transitional period following the fall of Gadhafi."


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A plume of smoke rises to the sky in the background as a media worker deals with equipment after an airstrike in Tripoli, Libya, on Saturday, May 28, 2011.


Nato has only one question as it prepares to unleash Apache helicopters against the forces of Muammar Gaddafi this week, and Captain Ali Mohammed, one of the defenders of the besieged rebel city of Misrata, can supply the answer.


If, as most pundits predict, tomorrow's peace mission to Tripoli by South African president Jacob Zuma fails, Nato will hit the Libyan leader harder than it has ever hit him before.


British Apaches, together with French Tiger attack helicopters, will launch surgical strikes on Gaddafi's forces besieging Misrata. They have the ability to destroy individual gun positions in the town of Zlitan, west of Misrata, with less risk to the civilian population kept there as human shields.


But there is a problem. This kind of war takes time, and time is the commodity Nato does not have as critics complain it has extended the original United Nations no-fly zone mandate into what is regime change in all but name.


Yet Gaddafi's troops continue to rain death on the city outskirts, which shuddered under a bombardment of hundreds of mortars and missiles on Friday, fired from launchers too far back for the rebels to counter.


Fast jets continue pounding targets in both Tripoli and behind the front lines. In the skies across Libya, British and American Reaper drones, which can stay on patrol for 14 hours, circle endlessly. They watch the few highways out of Tripoli day and night, using their own Hellfire missiles to destroy any vehicle they see, in effect making it impossible for Gaddafi to reinforce or supply his units at Misrata and those further west near Benghazi.


But his firepower has its limits. The UN resolution mandating Nato's action prohibits the use of ground troops, leaving the alliance needing to win with only the lightly armed rebel troops to actually take and hold ground.


"Sixty per cent of Gaddafi's army do not want to fight," says Abdulla Ali, a rebel army spokesman in Misrata. "They are forced there. If they do not fight they are shot."


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A rebel fighter returns fire during a battle with forces loyal to Gaddafi along the western front near Misrata.



However, before the Apaches are unleashed, Nato has decided to give diplomacy a final shot. The key part of this plan fell into place on Friday when Russia's president Dmitry Medvedev announced – possibly through gritted teeth – that he now supported Nato's demand that Gaddafi step down immediately and unconditionally.


That message will be delivered by Zuma in Tripoli tomorrow, coupled with the threat that if the Libyan leader refuses, Nato will unleash what will be the heaviest attack the alliance has mounted. Yesterday brought a clear sign of its increasing impatience with the regime as a rare daytime air strike was launched on the capital of Tripoli.


For diplomats, the problem is not with Zuma's negotiating skills, but with the fact that the message he conveys to Gaddafi offers no carrots, only sticks. Capitulation means he faces certain death if he stays in Libya. If he flees, any country willing to take him will shortly receive demands from the UN to hand him over to the International Criminal Court, whose judges are expected to issue an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity within weeks. The chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, has already called for one of his sons, Saif, to be indicted, and more charges against three more members of the regime are expected to follow later this year.


In Misrata, few rebels expect the Libyan dictator to agree to step down, even in the face of Nato's bolstered firepower.


"He will not listen – he will stay and fight," said Osama Alfitory, a fighter from Benghazi who volunteered to come and help in Misrata, for him a brother-city. "This guy is insane. I think he believes he will win in the end."


Nato hopes that if its renewed assault begins – which could happen as early as Tuesday night – Gaddafi's army will start to think differently.





Observer/Guardian/AP
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