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| Security agents try to stop supporters of Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi from protesting at the hotel where members of the foreign members were staying in Tripoli March 18, 2011. The United Nations authoriZed military action to curb Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Thursday, hours after he threatened to storm the rebel bastion of Benghazi overnight, showing “no mercy, no pity”. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra |
The action came as the Libyan leader was poised to make a final push against rebels holding out in Bengazhi, Libya’s second largest city.
The vote in the 15-member council was 10-0 with five abstentions, including Russia and China.
The United States, France and Britain had pushed for speedy approval.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said if the resolution was approved, France would support military action against Gaddafi within hours. The U.S. said it was preparing for action. Several Arab nations were expected to provide backup.
Gaddafi vowed to launch a final assault on Benghazi and crush the rebellion as his forces advanced toward the city and warplanes bombed its airport Thursday.
The Libyan leader said in an interview broadcast Thursday on Portuguese public broadcaster Radiotelevisao Portuguesa that he rejected any U.N. threats of action.
“The U.N. Security Council has no mandate,” Gaddafi said. “We don’t acknowledge their resolutions.”
He warned that any military action would be construed as “colonization without any justification” and would have “grave repercussions.”
The text of the resolution calls on nations to “establish a ban on all flights in the airspace of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in order to help protect civilians.”
It also authorizes U.N. member states to take “all necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.”
Battles rage east and west
In Tobruk, Libyan rebels said Thursday they had shot down two warplanes trying to bomb their eastern bastion Benghazi, as state television claimed major military gains by Gaddafi’s forces.
With battles raging in the east and west, France Thursday scrambled Foreign Minister Alain Juppe to the UN Security Council in a bid to get a draft resolution authorizing action in Libya passed.
Libyan television said Gaddafi’s troops were on the outskirts of Benghazi, the major Mediterranean city in the east and seat of the opposition trying to unseat Gaddafi.
“The town of Zuwaytinah is under control (of loyalists) and armed forces are on the outskirts of Benghazi,” Allibya television said. Zuwaytinah is about 93 miles south of Benghazi.
However, a rebel spokesman said the situation was “calm” in the city of more than a million people.
“The Gaddafi forces tried to carry out an air raid on the city but our anti-aircraft defenses repulsed the offensive and two planes were shot down,” the spokesman told AFP, reached by telephone.
However, a doctor in the city said only one plane was shot down.
“The situation is calm although some planes tried to bomb rebel positions in the city. The rebels shot down one of their planes (and it fell) in the suburbs,” the doctor said.
“We are gathered in the (central) square outside the courthouse and morale is high,” said the doctor, who spoke by telephone.
Libyan television also said loyalists had overrun the rebel bastion of Misrata, the country’s third city located 125 miles east of Tripoli, a day after Gaddafi promised a “decisive battle” there.
“The armed forces are in control of the city of Misrata. It is now being purged of the terrorist gangs,” Allibya television said.
That claim was denied by a rebel spokesman in the city reached by telephone, who said insurgents remained in command.
“We still control the city, even its outskirts. Gaddafi is mobilizing his forces a few kilometers away,” the spokesman said.
“We hear sporadic gunfire on the outskirts of the city, but that’s all.”
The spokesman also reported that 18 people, including three civilians, were “martyred” in fierce fighting on Wednesday. “We inflicted huge losses to the Gaddafi forces, including 60 people killed,” he added.
On Tuesday, state television said the army would soon move against Benghazi, and on Wednesday, Gaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam predicted that everything would be over in 48 hours.
In an interview with Russia Today television broadcast late Wednesday, Gaddafi said Benghazi will fall to the Tripoli government “without our use of military force” as local residents will themselves chase out the “bandits.”
“As you see, all are on our side except the bandits. People are constantly appealing to us for help and to rescue them from the bandits,” he said in the interview.
“It is Benghazi that particularly begs for help. While it is true that the bandits have occupied buildings, also residential ones, for the purposes of having a human shield for themselves, we believe Benghazi can deal with them without our use of military force.”
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said that action might have to “go beyond a no-fly zone at this point, as the situation on the ground has evolved, and as a no-fly zone has inherent limitations in terms of protection of civilians at immediate risk.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in a letter to the leaders of the other countries on the 15-nation council, said on Wednesday that: “Together, we can save the martyred people of Libya. It is now a matter of days, if not hours.”
And NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen urged the Security Council to agree a resolution on Thursday, warning that “time is running out.”
But German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, whose country currently sits on the Security Council and is a key NATO member, said on Wednesday “we have no wish to and we cannot take sides in a north African civil war.”
A no-fly zone would amount to military action and ground forces could be needed as a follow up if it failed.
“We do not wish to start down a path which would eventually lead to German soldiers taking part in a war in Libya,” Westerwelle said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had requested more information from Arab states on how a no-fly zone would be policed.
China, which like Russia wields a veto on the Security Council, has also expressed reservations about any intervention.
In New York, deputy Libyan UN ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi warned Wednesday that “in the coming hours we will see a real genocide if the international community does not act quickly.”
Dabbashi, who defected early on from the Gaddafi regime, said “about five” Arab states were ready to help police the no-fly zone if it were adopted.
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