PARIS — France and Britain on Tuesday accused NATO of failing to do enough to protect Libya’s rebels from Moammar Khadafy’s troops, as an opposition official alleged that regime forces had killed 10,000 people since fierce fighting began in the North African country.
Meanwhile, Libyan defector and ex-minister Moussa Koussa was expected to leave the UK for talks in Qatar to discuss his country’s future.
In an interview with France Inter radio, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said the alliance was not doing enough in the volatile North African country since taking control of the campaign.
“NATO must play its role fully. It wanted to take the lead in operations, we accepted that,” Juppe said, according to AFP. “It must play its role today which means preventing Khadafy from using heavy weapons to bomb populations.”
The French defense minister Gerard Longuet later underscored the point, suggesting some members of the alliance were not pulling their weight, the news agency reported.
“NATO is not able, at this point, to oblige our partners to take part in this action,” Longuet told the French parliament. “I regret, for example, that France and Britain are carrying the bulk of the effort, even if the United States does continue to provide indispensable support in the airspace,” he said.
The US took part in the first Franco-British led air raids against Khadafy’s forces last month, but since then Washington and other NATO allies have been reluctant to commit ground attack jets.
“Today we have no support in the ground attack role, without which there’s no chance of breaking the siege of towns like Misrata or Zenten,” Longuet said, referring to two rebel-held towns under bombardment by Khadafy’s forces.
Britain joined the criticism, with Foreign Secretary William Hague urging NATO allies to intensify operations.
“We must maintain and intensify our efforts in NATO, that is why the United Kingdom has in the last week supplied additional aircraft capable of striking ground targets threatening the civilian population of Libya,” Hague said.
“Of course it would be welcome if other countries also do the same,” he told reporters as he arrived in Luxembourg for a meeting of European Union foreign ministers. “There is always more to do.”
A top NATO general defended the bombing campaign, saying at a news briefing in Brussels that the alliance was doing “a great job” since it took over late last month from the US, British and French coalition.
“With the assets we have, we are doing a great job,” said General Mark van Uhm, NATO’s chief of allied operations, adding that the alliance has kept a “high operational tempo” in recent days, AFP reported.
Later in the day, a rebel official alleged that Khadafy’s forces had killed 10,000 people since fighting began and he asked for further civilian protection.
“We have now about 10,000 killed by Khadafy soldiers, we have about 20,000 persons missing and about 30,000 injured — 7,000 of them seriously injured with life endangered,” Ali Al Isawi, a representative of Libya’s Transitional National Council (TNC), told reporters in Luxembourg after meeting with EU foreign ministers, according to AFP.
“We want more efforts regarding protection of civilians against this aggression,” he added.
Isawi and another Libyan rebel leader Mahmoud Jibril were received by the European Union Tuesday in a meeting that Juppe said sent out a “signal of recognition,” though only three nations — France, Italy and Qatar — have granted the TNC diplomatic status, AFP said.
Their meeting came a day ahead of talks in the Qatari capital of Doha, which Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister and head of intelligence, was expected to attend to discuss Libya’s future along with representatives from the Benghazi-based TNC.
Koussa is leaving the UK for the first time since defecting almost two weeks ago, with Britain saying the ex-minister was a free individual and could travel as he wishes.
Koussa, who has been questioned by Scottish police over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, warned Monday in his first comments since his defection, that Libya could become a failed state, wracked by civil war.