Hillary Clinton says U.S. is trying to avoid perception of an oil grab in Libya

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tells the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the U.S. has been cautious about sending the military because it wants to avoid perceptions that it has a plan to 'invade for oil.' Also, Washington wants to respect the Libyan insurgency's desire to oust Moammar Kadafi on its own, she says.

By Paul Richter, Washington Bureau
1:04 PM PST, March 1, 2011

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WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has been cautious about sending the military to Libya during its civil upheaval in an effort to avoid perceptions that the United States has a plan to "invade for oil," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday.

Clinton said U.S. officials, in weighing military involvement in the unrest, also are taking into account the Libyan opposition's desire to oust dictator Moammar Kadafi without foreign help.

Clinton's comments, to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, suggest that the administration is likely to continue to prefer restraint in deploying the military, even though officials have said that military moves are under serious consideration.

Clinton was challenged on the administration's approach by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), who noted that the Chinese and British used military planes and ships to evacuate their citizens last week. The United States sent no military equipment, but used a "rented ferry" that was stuck in Tripoli for two days because of bad seas, he noted.

Chabot called the administration's approach "tepid."

But Clinton said the United States needed to be more cautious because other countries "didn't have the same history we do with Libya," referring to the 30-year antagonism between the two countries. In 1979, at the time of the Iranian revolution, Kadafi's security forces sacked and burned the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, and U.S. citizens barely escaped.

Clinton said the administration wanted to keep the American military out of sight because officials wanted to evacuate U.S. diplomats and citizens "in a way that did not raise alarm bells around the region and the world that we were about to invade for oil."

She noted that on websites writing about the uprising "you see a constant drumbeat that 'the United States is going to invade Libya to take over the oil and we can't let that happen.' "

"And we are not going to do that," she said.

Clinton said U.S. officials are "also very conscious of the desire by the Libyan opposition forces that they be seen as doing this by themselves on behalf of the Libyan people, that there not be outside intervention by any external force, because they want this to have been their accomplishment. We respect that."

U.S. officials and allied governments have been considering the use of the military either to provide help in the growing humanitarian crisis or to try to prevent Kadafi's forces from killing large numbers of opponents. They have been discussing the possibility of sending military aircraft to create a "no-fly zone" to prevent air attacks on the opposition.

Also Tuesday, U.S. officials acknowledged that Kadafi would still face war-crimes charges even if he fled to a third country, a fact that may encourage him to fight until he wins or dies.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that a United Nations Security Council resolution adopted last weekend refers charges against Kadafi to the International Criminal Court.

"So wherever Kadafi is, wherever he goes, he will still be subject to that investigation, and potentially to international legal justice," she said in a television interview on the CBS "Early Show."