Libya: The International Community Commitment

By African Bulletin on June 10, 2011

Convinced that the operation enters its final stretch, and that the Libyan regime is “considerably weakened”,

the NATO coalition urged its members for a final effort to bring down the actual regime and prepare the after-Gaddafi. For president Obama, the colonel’s departure is “inevitable and the military pressure will be intensified”. In the same way, the African Union front, in favor of a negotiated compromise, began to weaken. It started with the head of the African mediation who stated that the departure of Colonel Muammar Kadhafi has become a “necessity”. And conjointly we have to add the European Union position, through the voice of Catherine Ashton, who stated that the EU is also working with its international partners (UN, Arab League, AU and GCC) to “exert political and economic pressure on the Libyan regime, which is seeking to suppress the democratic will of its people for change “. Thus the Contact Group is projecting to ask the National Transition Council to submit its plan for governing the country. Also the 22-member Libya Contact Group announced the series of financial measures as they met in the United Arab Emirates to plan for a Libya without Muammar Kadhafi. Allied and Arab nations pledged more than 1.1 billion dollars to help Libya’s opposition council and civilians affected by the country’s conflict. All these measures are politically and financially supporting the NATO defense ministers who were willing to go all the way in dismantling the actual Libyan regime. But the question now is how to find ways to mobilize all together the military means.  That was the task that NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has called on for. He asked for more flexibility in the use of military resources committed in the Libyan field, without restricting them to only monitor the no-fly zone, but to consolidate all forces to definitively curb the loyalist forces’ resistance. The NATO statement is clear and says: “the end of the regime in place is near, and therefore the post-Kadhafi era is no doubt coming very soon”.