By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON — The White House announced a five-point program on Thursday of steps to isolate Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and ultimately drive him from power, all stopping well short of military action, but distanced itself from the assessment of the nation’s top intelligence chief, who said Thursday that “over the longer term” Colonel Qaddafi’s superior firepower “will prevail” over the opposition.
The steps that the White House announced include a partial embrace of the opposition movement as well as threats to track and prosecute, in international courts, loyalists to Mr. Qaddafi who commit atrocities. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she would meet with Libyan opposition leaders next week, and President Obama’s national security adviser made it clear that Washington was looking for ways to aid the Libyan leader’s opponents.
“We’re coordinating directly with them to provide assistance,” said the adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, though the United States has stopped short of recognizing them as the legitimate government of Libya. The help, he added, consisted of humanitarian aid and advice on how to organize an opposition government.
But on a day when military momentum moved back toward Mr. Qaddafi’s forces, it was not evident that the efforts the White House announced would be enough to ensure an end to Mr. Qaddafi’s 41-year-long rule, or even to slow the pace of his attacks.
In Brussels, NATO deferred until at least next week any decision on establishing a no-flight zone over Libya, amid hesitations in Washington and several European capitals over being drawn into a civil war in a country the West does not consider critical to its security. Both Mrs. Clinton, speaking in Washington, and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, in Brussels, warned about the potential dangers of American military involvement, unless it was authorized by the United Nations and unless neighboring countries joined in the effort.
“It’s not enough for them to just cheer us on,” one senior administration official said Thursday. “They have to put some skin in the game. The president has made clear it can’t just be us.”
The White House campaign to convince both Colonel Qaddafi’s loyalists and NATO allies that the Libyan dictator’s days are numbered were undercut by a military assessment given earlier in the day by the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper. Responding to questions, Mr. Clapper told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that Colonel Qaddafi had a potentially decisive advantage in arms and equipment that would make itself felt as the conflict wore on.
“This is kind of a stalemate back and forth,” he said, “but I think over the longer term that the regime will prevail.”
Mr. Clapper also offered another scenario, one in which the country is split into two or three ministates, reverting to the way it was before Colonel Qaddafi’s rule. “You could end up with a situation where Qaddafi would have Tripoli and its environs, and then Benghazi and its environs could be under another ministate,” he said.
The White House was clearly taken aback by the assessment that Mr. Qaddafi could prevail, and Mr. Donilon, talking to reporters a few hours later, suggested that Mr. Clapper was addressing the question too narrowly.
“If you did a static and one-dimensional assessment of just looking at order of battle and mercenaries,” Mr. Donilon said, one could conclude that the Libyan leader would hang on. But he said that he took a “dynamic” and “multidimensional” view, which he said would lead “to a different conclusion about how this is going to go forward.”
“The lost legitimacy matters,” he said. “Motivation matters. Incentives matter.” He said Colonel Qaddafi’s “resources are being cut off,” and ultimately that would undercut his hold on power.
A senior administration official, driving home the difference in an e-mail on Thursday evening, wrote, “The president does not think that Qaddafi will prevail.”
Such differing assessments rarely surface in public in the midst of a crisis, although in the early days of the Egypt uprising there were conflicting assessments of the stability of President Hosni Mubarak’s government. Mr. Clapper’s job, created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, was intended to conduct exactly the kind of all-source analysis that Mr. Donilon talked about. But the White House said later Thursday that it retained full confidence in Mr. Clapper.
One prominent Republican senator, however, said that the intelligence director should lose his job. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that Mr. Clapper’s assessment “will make the situation more difficult for those opposing Qaddafi,” adding, “It also undercuts our national efforts to bring about the desired result of Libya moving from dictator to democracy.”
In Brussels, meanwhile, NATO all but rejected a no-flight zone over Libya and agreed only to reposition warships in the region and plan for humanitarian aid.
Mr. Gates, who has been resistant to a no-flight zone, said in a news briefing after a two-hour meeting of NATO defense ministers that planning for a possible no-flight zone would continue, “but that’s the extent of it.”
Both Mr. Gates and the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, stressed that NATO would agree to a no-flight zone only with “a clear legal basis” — in short, authorization from the United Nations. Both also said in nearly identical statements that NATO would not take military action unless there was “a demonstrable need” and strong support from neighboring Arab nations.
Europe is also riven by disagreements on how to force Mr. Qaddafi out. When France stepped ahead of the rest of the military alliance on Thursday morning to become the first country to recognize the rebel leadership in Benghazi, Britain took exception. In comments at the European Union in Brussels, Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, said that the Libyan rebels “are legitimate people to talk to, of course, but we recognize states rather than groups within states.”
Mrs. Clinton held her first meeting with one of Colonel Qaddafi’s opponents later on Thursday when she met at the State Department with Libya’s ambassador to the United States, Ali Suleiman Aujali. Mr. Aujali previously announced that he no longer recognized the Libyan government, leaving him in a diplomatic limbo after Libya’s foreign ministry effectively fired him in a fax sent to the State Department.
The steps that the White House announced include a partial embrace of the opposition movement as well as threats to track and prosecute, in international courts, loyalists to Mr. Qaddafi who commit atrocities. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she would meet with Libyan opposition leaders next week, and President Obama’s national security adviser made it clear that Washington was looking for ways to aid the Libyan leader’s opponents.
“We’re coordinating directly with them to provide assistance,” said the adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, though the United States has stopped short of recognizing them as the legitimate government of Libya. The help, he added, consisted of humanitarian aid and advice on how to organize an opposition government.
But on a day when military momentum moved back toward Mr. Qaddafi’s forces, it was not evident that the efforts the White House announced would be enough to ensure an end to Mr. Qaddafi’s 41-year-long rule, or even to slow the pace of his attacks.
In Brussels, NATO deferred until at least next week any decision on establishing a no-flight zone over Libya, amid hesitations in Washington and several European capitals over being drawn into a civil war in a country the West does not consider critical to its security. Both Mrs. Clinton, speaking in Washington, and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, in Brussels, warned about the potential dangers of American military involvement, unless it was authorized by the United Nations and unless neighboring countries joined in the effort.
“It’s not enough for them to just cheer us on,” one senior administration official said Thursday. “They have to put some skin in the game. The president has made clear it can’t just be us.”
The White House campaign to convince both Colonel Qaddafi’s loyalists and NATO allies that the Libyan dictator’s days are numbered were undercut by a military assessment given earlier in the day by the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper. Responding to questions, Mr. Clapper told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that Colonel Qaddafi had a potentially decisive advantage in arms and equipment that would make itself felt as the conflict wore on.
“This is kind of a stalemate back and forth,” he said, “but I think over the longer term that the regime will prevail.”
Mr. Clapper also offered another scenario, one in which the country is split into two or three ministates, reverting to the way it was before Colonel Qaddafi’s rule. “You could end up with a situation where Qaddafi would have Tripoli and its environs, and then Benghazi and its environs could be under another ministate,” he said.
The White House was clearly taken aback by the assessment that Mr. Qaddafi could prevail, and Mr. Donilon, talking to reporters a few hours later, suggested that Mr. Clapper was addressing the question too narrowly.
“If you did a static and one-dimensional assessment of just looking at order of battle and mercenaries,” Mr. Donilon said, one could conclude that the Libyan leader would hang on. But he said that he took a “dynamic” and “multidimensional” view, which he said would lead “to a different conclusion about how this is going to go forward.”
“The lost legitimacy matters,” he said. “Motivation matters. Incentives matter.” He said Colonel Qaddafi’s “resources are being cut off,” and ultimately that would undercut his hold on power.
A senior administration official, driving home the difference in an e-mail on Thursday evening, wrote, “The president does not think that Qaddafi will prevail.”
Such differing assessments rarely surface in public in the midst of a crisis, although in the early days of the Egypt uprising there were conflicting assessments of the stability of President Hosni Mubarak’s government. Mr. Clapper’s job, created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, was intended to conduct exactly the kind of all-source analysis that Mr. Donilon talked about. But the White House said later Thursday that it retained full confidence in Mr. Clapper.
One prominent Republican senator, however, said that the intelligence director should lose his job. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that Mr. Clapper’s assessment “will make the situation more difficult for those opposing Qaddafi,” adding, “It also undercuts our national efforts to bring about the desired result of Libya moving from dictator to democracy.”
In Brussels, meanwhile, NATO all but rejected a no-flight zone over Libya and agreed only to reposition warships in the region and plan for humanitarian aid.
Mr. Gates, who has been resistant to a no-flight zone, said in a news briefing after a two-hour meeting of NATO defense ministers that planning for a possible no-flight zone would continue, “but that’s the extent of it.”
Both Mr. Gates and the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, stressed that NATO would agree to a no-flight zone only with “a clear legal basis” — in short, authorization from the United Nations. Both also said in nearly identical statements that NATO would not take military action unless there was “a demonstrable need” and strong support from neighboring Arab nations.
Europe is also riven by disagreements on how to force Mr. Qaddafi out. When France stepped ahead of the rest of the military alliance on Thursday morning to become the first country to recognize the rebel leadership in Benghazi, Britain took exception. In comments at the European Union in Brussels, Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, said that the Libyan rebels “are legitimate people to talk to, of course, but we recognize states rather than groups within states.”
Mrs. Clinton held her first meeting with one of Colonel Qaddafi’s opponents later on Thursday when she met at the State Department with Libya’s ambassador to the United States, Ali Suleiman Aujali. Mr. Aujali previously announced that he no longer recognized the Libyan government, leaving him in a diplomatic limbo after Libya’s foreign ministry effectively fired him in a fax sent to the State Department.
No comments:
Post a Comment