NYtimes
March 19, 2011
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ELISABETH BUMILLER
TRIPOLI, Libya — French military jets have flown reconnaissance missions over Libya, the first sign of the largest military intervention in the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq. President Nicolas Sarkozy said the jets had begin enforcing the no-fly zone over the eastern city of Benghazi, under heavy bombardment by forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Mr. Sarkozy spoke from Paris, where leaders from the United States, Europe and Arab countries met in Paris on Saturday to assemble the intervention.
Before Mr. Sarkozy’s statement, Colonel Qaddafi warned President Obama and European leaders not to enforce a no-flight zone over Libya even as he defied their demands for a ceasefire.
His comments came one day after Mr.
Obama ordered Colonel Qaddafi to carry out an immediate cease-fire, withdraw his forces from rebel-held cities and stop all attacks on Libyan civilians or face military action from the United States and its allies in Europe and the Arab world.
The tone of the letters — one addressed to Mr. Obama and a second to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations — suggested that Colonel Qaddafi was leaving himself little room to back down.
“Libya is not yours. Libya is for all Libyans,” Colonel Qaddafi wrote in a letter addressed to Mr. Obama and a second to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations. One of his government spokesman read the letters to the news media:
“This is injustice, it is clear aggression, and it is uncalculated risk for its consequences on the Mediterranean and Europe.
You will regret it if you take a step toward intervening in our internal affairs.”
Colonel Qaddafi addressed President Obama as “our son,” in a letter that combined pleas with a jarring familiarity. “I have said to you before that even if Libya and the United States enter into war, God forbid, you will always remain my son and I have all the love for you as a son, and I do not want your image to change with me,” he wrote. “We are confronting Al Qaea in the Islamic Maghred, nothing more. What would you do if you found them controlling American cities with the power of weapons? Tell me how would you behave so that I could follow your example?”
In Paris, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with France, Britain and members of the Arab League to consider the on further action.
On Friday, President Obama made one of the most forceful statements of his presidency. “Let me be clear, these terms are not negotiable,” he said from the East Room of the White House.
Libya had pledged a cease-fire hours before. But reports on Saturday from rebel-held territory indicated that Colonel Qaddafi’s troops were attacking in the east.
In a telephone interview from Benghazi on Saturday morning, a rebel fighter who gave his name as Monsour said there was heavy fighting in the west of the city. He said he had seen 12 tanks from the Qaddafi forces moving through the city. Qaddafi snipers were atop the Foreign Ministry building, not far from the courthouse that is the de facto rebel headquarters, and there was fighting along Gamel Abdul Nasser street nearby as well. The government spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, denied in Tripoli that pro-Qaddafi units were attacking in Benghazi and said that only the rebels had an incentive to break the cease-fire.
Earlier, the BBC also reported that tanks were in the city on Saturday morning. After the report, the BBC Web site was inaccessible in Tripoli, suggesting that it may have been blocked.
News organizations reporting from Benghazi said that a fighter jet was shot down on the outskirts of the city and several Western Web sites published a dramatic photo of the warplane plunging to the ground in flames after the pilot appeared to have ejected. It was not immediately clear whether the plane belonged to attacking Qaddafi forces or the rebels, or how it had been shot down.
The head of the rebel National Libyan Council appealed to the international community on Saturday to act swiftly to protect civilians from government forces which he said were attacking Benghazi, Reuters reported. “Now there is a bombardment by artillery and rockets on all districts of Benghazi,” Reuters said, quoting Mustafa Abdel Jalil in an appearance on Al Jazeera television. “Today in Benghazi there will be a catastrophe if the international community does not implement the resolutions of the U.N. Security
The Qaddafi government appeared earlier Saturday to be laying the groundwork for a potential strike in the name of self-defense.
Khalid Kaim, the deputy foreign minister, said government intelligence showed tanks, artillery and weapons from Benghazi attacking a town in the east. Government forces, he said, were holding back to observe the cease-fire.
On Friday afternoon, people fleeing nearby Ajdabiya said government troops were shelling and conducting assaults. The western city of Misurata was under siege, its electricity and water cut by the government, and doctors reported that at least 25 people were killed, including 16 unarmed civilians. In Tripoli, the repression of peaceful protests continued, and gunfire was heard late in the evening.
In the neighborhood of Tajoura, a center of opposition where residents say several people have been shot and many have been arrested after protests in recent weeks, one resident said there was an attempt to organize a demonstration after midday prayers on Friday to celebrate the decision to declare a cease-fire. But when they left the mosque, they were met by soldiers firing into the air, this resident said. They tried again at evening prayers but soldiers blocked the entrance to the mosque, dispersed them from the central square, and put up checkpoints that blocked any care or pedestrian movement.
“There is a complete shutdown,” the resident said in a telephone interview, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “Many people in the neighborhood who spoke out against the regime have been arrested. Those not been arrested are avoiding it by moving around, staying with relatives in other neighborhoods.”
Mr. Obama spoke 18 hours after the passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing military action against Colonel Qaddafi, and as violence raged across the Middle East. In Yemen, security forces and government supporters shot and killed at least 45 protesters. In Bahrain, the government tore down the monument adopted by the country’s rebel movement, the pearl in the middle of Pearl Square in Manama. In Syria, a police state where protest is rare, large demonstrations broke out in four cities.
In contrast to the military intervention in Libya, the administration has restricted itself in those countries to statements condemning the violence and urging restraint.
Mr. Obama used tough language that was at times reminiscent of President George W. Bush before the war in Iraq.
“If Qaddafi does not comply with the resolution, the international community will impose consequences, and the resolution will be enforced through military action,” Mr. Obama said, laying out a policy decision made after several weeks in which the administration sent conflicting signals about its willingness to use force to aid the rebels at a time of upheaval throughout the Arab world.
But unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama cast the United States in a supporting, almost reluctant role, reflecting the clear desire of the Pentagon, which has been strongly resistant to another American war in the Middle East. He said that Britain, France and Arab nations would take the lead, and that United States ground forces would not enter Libya.
The White House and the Pentagon offered no other details on what the precise role of the United States military would be in any strikes against Colonel Qaddafi’s forces, but an administration official said late Friday that the United States might take the lead in an attempt to destroy Libya’s air defenses at the beginning of operations.
“We may do the shaping on the front end,” the administration official said. The official was referring to the ability of American forces, greater than that of the allies, to strike targets precisely from long distances, whether by missiles launched from submarines, surface warships or attack jets.
The official said that the goal was to limit American military involvement to the initial stages of any action, and that it was the administration’s expectation that the allies could control the skies over Libya once Colonel Qaddafi’s air defenses are destroyed.
Mr. Obama’s remarks at the White House capped a day of diplomacy mixed with military threats in Washington, London and Paris, where the allies forged a united front against Colonel Qaddafi. Britain, France and then the United States responded with almost identically worded skepticism after Moussa Koussa, the Libyan foreign minister, announced a cease-fire, his hands shaking, and European officials indicated that they were prepared to move quickly if a decision was made to take military action.
“We will judge him by his actions, not his words,” Prime Minister Cameron of Britain told the BBC in London.
A few hours later, Mrs. Clinton said in Washington that the United States would be “not responsive or impressed by words.” She said that the allies would “have to see actions on the ground, and that is not yet at all clear.”
In Paris, the French Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bernard Valero, said that Colonel Qaddafi “begins to be afraid, but on the ground, the threat hasn’t changed.”
Obama administration officials said that action against Libya had to include the Arab countries, and they were insistent, as one senior official put it, that the “red, green and black” of Arab flags be prominent in military operations. As of Thursday night, the United States said that it had commitments from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to contribute fighter jets, and that Jordan had also agreed to take part, although the extent of its participation was not clear on Friday.
Conditions on the ground remained confused and tense in Libya on Friday night. Several hours after Mr. Moussa had declared a cease-fire, explosions could be heard about 30 miles away from Ajdabiya. Residents who left the city after the cease-fire declaration said the announcement of an end to hostilities had in fact caused no break in the fighting.
Two doctors in the city of Misurata said that 25 people were killed on Friday, including 16 civilians.
“What cease-fire?” said Mohamed, a spokesman for the rebels in Misurata. “What lies, what murder!” After watching Mr. Obama’s speech on a generator-powered television at the Misurata medical center, he said, “We are very heartened by Mr. Obama’s words. We feel that he finally grasped the situation and grasped the urgency.”
A spokeswoman for the rebel ruling council, Iman Bugaighis, said on Friday that Colonel Qaddafi’s troops were moving toward Benghazi. “They are using their grenades to shoot up to 30 kilometers,” she said.
But Khalid Kaim, the deputy foreign minister, said emphatically, “We have no intention of entering the city of Benghazi.”
On Friday, residents of Ajdabiya described a vicious battle for their city that had lasted days, killed scores of people and wrecked neighborhoods, including large parts of an area called Seventh of October. They said that Colonel Qaddafi’s loyalists attacked Tuesday from a ring around the city’s outskirts with tanks, missiles and other heavy artillery.
“The houses were shaking,” said a woman named Fatima, who fled with her family on Friday. “We thought it would stop but it didn’t.”
On Wednesday doctors at the hospital in Ajdabiya said 38 people had died in the fighting. By Friday, residents guessed at a far higher number, saying they saw bodies in the streets. Moussa al-Dulaimi, a police officer who fled the city on Friday, said seven neighbors died in the fighting.
The residents described intense shelling around the post office, and especially in the north of the city. Residents were shot at checkpoints and by snipers, they said.
Thousands of refugees have settled about twenty minutes outside of Ajdabiya, on the road to the eastern city of Tobruk, in tents and abandoned homes in the desert. Volunteers from Tobruk bring food, water and fuel to the refugees, who cook on campfires or share small power generators. “The situation is very dangerous. Nobody is going back to the city,” said Khaled Gabally, who left Ajdabiya on Thursday.
By Friday, government tanks were posted most of the city’s entrances, residents said. As people left, soldiers checked for guns and cellphone videos of the violence. A few residents said the soldiers made them repeat an oath: “Only Muammar, God and Libya.”
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Tripoli, Libya, and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Kareem Fahim from eastern Libya; Dan Bilefsky from the United Nations; Helene Cooper, Mark Landler and Thom Shanker from Washington; Richard Berry, Alan Cowell and Steven Erlanger from Paris; Julia Werdigier from London; and Steven Lee Myers from Tunis.
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