Their goal, a British official said, was to find ways to persuade other NATO nations to invest more aircraft and political capital in the bombing campaign, now being shouldered overwhelmingly by British and French warplanes. Although more than 175 aircraft from 17 nations have joined the coalition, most governments have surrounded their participation with restrictions that prevent them from carrying out effective strike missions against Gaddafi’s forces.
“Clearly, there is a belief that NATO could do more in terms of direct support,” said the British official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
As Cameron and Sarkozy huddled here, envoys from 20 nations gathered in Qatar, on the Persian Gulf, to lay groundwork for an accelerated push for a diplomatic solution to the Libya conflict. The NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, reminded the diplomats that NATO’s mission is to protect civilians, not win the war for rebel forces, and he declared that ultimately there is not a purely military solution.
As long as Gaddafi remains in Libya at the head of a loyalist army, however, it was difficult to see where the diplomacy was leading, specialists in Paris noted. Rebel leaders have vowed not to lay down their arms until Gaddafi and his sons are gone.
In the meantime, representatives of the rebels’ Transitional National Council at the meeting in Qatar called for more intensive NATO airstrikes, particularly against Libyan army tanks and missile batteries involved in attacks against the rebel-held cities of Misurata, 131 miles east of Tripoli, the capital, and Ajdabiya, 99 miles south of rebel headquarters in Benghazi.
The efforts to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya also will top the agenda for a two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers that begins in Berlin Thursday.
The Obama administration continued to push back on the suggestion that more U.S. military help was needed. Pentagon officials acknowledged that U.S. aircraft have been flying a small number of combat missions all along — mainly to suppress Libyan air defenses — while leaving the bulk of the flying to allies. But the officials said there have been no specific requests from NATO to bring back more U.S. warplanes.
Likewise, a State Department spokesman said Wednesday that there were as yet no plans for further U.S. military involvement.
“We believe that this operation’s been successful and that, led by NATO, it can continue to be successful,” the spokesman, Mark Toner, told reporters in Washington. Warplanes were protecting civilians and allowing diplomats and others to tackle the separate goal of persuading Gaddafi to leave, he said.
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