US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded yesterday that Muammar Gaddafi deliver demo-cracy instead of threats after the Libyan leader warned Europe of stinging attacks unless Nato halts its air war.
“Instead of issuing threats, Gaddafi should put the well-being and interests of his own people first and he should step down from power and help facilitate a democratic transition,” Clinton said on a visit to Nato ally Spain, the latest leg of a European tour.
In a speech broadcast by loudspeaker to thousands of loyalists gathered in Tripoli’s emblematic Green Square last Friday, the Libyan leader had warned that his loyalists could launch stinging attacks on Europe like “locusts and bees.”
“The Libyan people are capable, one day, of taking the battle to Europe and the Mediterranean,” Gaddafi said.
“They could attack your homes, your offices, your families could become legitimate military targets because you have transformed our offices, headquarters, homes and children into military targets which you say are legitimate,” Gaddafi said.
“If we decide to do so, we are capable of throwing ourselves on Europe like swarms of locusts or bees.”
Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez was asked at a news conference with Clinton about Gaddafi’s threat and vowed that Nato would keep up the pressure on the Libyan leader.
“We are working together to protect the Libyan people from the threats and violence that Gaddafi is employing against them. We will stay until we achieve our goals,” she said.
Clinton said: “The Nato-led mission is on track and pressure on Gaddafi is mounting and the rebels have been gaining strength and momentum. We need to see this through.”
Libyan state television, meanwhile, said Nato air strikes on yesterday had “destroyed infrastructure and claimed victims” in Al-Jafra, a desert region 600 kilometres south of Tripoli.
And some 300 children rallied in front of invited foreign media outside UN offices to condemn the air strikes.
The Libyan leader also urged his supporters to retrieve weapons that France supplied to rebels battling his regime from bases in an armed enclave in the strategic Nafusa Mountains, southwest of the capital.
“March on the jebel (mountains) and seize the weapons that the French have supplied,” he said.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said last Friday that this week’s arms drop was meant only to defend peaceful civilians from Gaddafi’s forces and thus fell in line with existing UN resolutions on the conflict.
“Civilians had been attacked by Gaddafi’s forces and were in an extremely vulnerable situation and that is why medicine, food and also weapons of self-defence were parachuted,” Juppe said France Inter radio.
“It is not a violation of the UN Security Council resolutions” under which France and other allies launched air strikes and imposed embargoes to protect civilians from Gaddafi, he added.
Nato said on yesterday that it had stepped up its air strikes against Gaddafi ‘s forces on the front lines around the rebels’ two enclaves in the mainly government-held west – the Nafusa Mountains and Libya’s third-largest city Misurata.
In the past four days in Gharyan, a government stronghold near the mountains, Nato aircraft struck eight targets including a military complex used to resupply Gaddafi troops, tanks and other military vehicles, the alliance said.
In its daily report for Friday, Nato said it had launched a total of 42 strike sorties over Libya, hitting two tanks near Gharyan and two armed vehicles near Bir al-Ghanam, also near the Nafusa.
In and around Tripoli, it said it had hit a military facility, three radars, two anti-aircraft guns, a surface-to-air missile launcher, four tanks, and a command and control vehicle.