Libya: The Muscovite “heat and cold”…

By African Bulletin on June 7, 2011

Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Sergei Ivanov, has strongly criticized the intervention of the Allies, declaring: “We do not agree with how the no-fly zone is imposed, and it does not respect anymore the 1973 resolution framework.

He denounced the helicopters’ deployment in Libya to accelerate the fall of the regime. That sounds like “the last step before a ground operation”, he voiced. He also expressed his concern about the disappearance of weapons from the Libyan warehouses; adding that he will not be surprised if ever one day an aircraft «would be shot down in the Libyan airspace. Thus, the Russian official harshly spoke, in the presence of U.S and British Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Liam Fox, while the British Foreign Minister, William Hague, was on a visit to Benghazi. Ivanov has been  much harder than President Dmitry Medvedev was on the Libyan issue, who at the G8 in Deauville, showed the “soft” face of  the Russians who claimed that “Colonel Kadhafi had lost its legitimacy and had to leave”.    A week ago Moscow was approached by the coalition to play a mediating role in the Libyan crisis. The Russian president’s special representative for cooperation with African countries, Senator Mikhail Margelov, going on a visit to Benghazi, said that “we want good relations with Libya and its people,” and “the Libyans are able to decide for their future and resolve their problems by themselves”; while regionally, Mr. Abdelaziz Belkhadem, the personal representative of the Algerian President has declared: “… we fear what is happening in Libya like an episode of a scenario that has began in Sudan and only the actors of this horrible plan know how and where it will end”. He added that:”…the invitation launched by the Gulf Cooperation Council towards our brothers in Morocco is so surprising and strange. It is another episode, which aims to encourage Algeria to look in the opposite direction and to neglect what is happening on its Eastern borders.  All these declarations and attitudes, either internationally or regionally are a prelude to new diplomatic tensions about Libya and beyond…