Diplomats: NATO, EU mulling Libyan no-fly zone
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Wednesday, March 2, 2011; 11:48 AM
BRUSSELS -- Some NATO countries are drawing up contingency plans modeled on the no-fly zones over the Balkans in the 1990s in case the international community decides to impose an air embargo over Libya, diplomats said Wednesday.
NATO has already said that any such move would require a clear mandate from the U.N. Security Council. This is unlikely because Russia, which has veto power in the council, has already rejected the idea.
Still, diplomats at NATO and the European Union said some countries, including United States and Britain, are already drawing up contingency plans to prevent Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's air force from carrying out air strikes against the rebels.
"When you are faced with very fast moving events like this you need to plan, to try and anticipate," said Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.
"You need to look at every contingency measure and that is exactly what we have done .... including on the issue of a no-fly zone," he said after meeting with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
He underscored that such move would be a huge undertaking.
"Clearly this is not something we would do on our own. Clearly there are legal issues. It is a very very large country," Clegg said.
Germany, however, warned that the military alliance should not play into Gadhafi's claims that the West was again meddling in Arab affairs by fomenting the revolt.
"I would advise that we conduct the debate ... about military options with all the appropriate caution and reserve," Germany's Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Wednesday in Berlin.
On Wednesday, Libyan warplanes bombed an ammunition depot on the outskirts of the rebel-held eastern town of Ajdabiya, 85 miles (140 kilometers) south of Benghazi. The air force has launched repeated airstrikes during the two-week revolt, but all of them appear to have targeted weapons depots in areas controlled by the rebellion.
The diplomats, who could not be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the options being looked into are modeled on the no-fly zone which the Western military alliance imposed over Bosnia in 1993 that had a U.N. mandate.
They also cited NATO's aerial offensive against Yugoslavia in 1999 - which did not have the U.N. Security Council mandate - in response to the crackdown on ethnic Albanian nationalists in Kosovo. The onslaught ended after 78 days with Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic agreeing to withdraw his forces from Kosovo.
