France says Gaddafi demise inevitable
Britain, the United States and allies from Middle East will hold the first meeting next week of a contact group set up to guide the international intervention in Libya, officials said Thursday.
Britain's Foreign Office said the group would meet in Qatar on Wednesday and include both member nations and some international organizations.
The ministry could not confirm precisely who has been invited to attend. British government officials said the U.S. would be represented, and that the Arab League is also expected to be at the talks.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said last week that he planned to travel to the talks alongside about a dozen other Arab, European and international officials.
The group was established during a summit in London last week to act as the political guide to the NATO-led military operation and humanitarian assistance mission in Libya.
Hague told Britain's Parliament last week that the panel would "maintain international unity and bring together a wide range of nations in support of a better future for Libya."
Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi has been widely excluded from international efforts to broker a peace plan, with rebels insisting that his four-decade rule must end.
France
France said Thursday that it was now only a question of how Gaddafi’s regime meets its downfall rather than whether the veteran Libyan ruler can survive in power.
"The question today is to know under what conditions Gadadfi goes, not how he's going to be able to hold on to power," Foreign Minister Alian Juppe told lawmakers.
"Besides protecting civilians, especially in (rebel bastion) Benghazi, we have already destabilized Gaddafi," he said as an international coalition continued to bombard Gaddafi’s forces to prevent them attacking civilians.
Juppe however admitted that were differences of opinion among European Union members as to how to get Gaddafi to step down after four decades in power.
"Some of our partners feel that sanctions are sufficient. There is disagreement on this point."
Juppe noted that in U.N. Security Council resolutions authorizing military intervention in Libya "it is not written in black and white that we want to get rid of Gaddafi."
But his departure is apparently now an inevitable outcome of the crisis for Britain, France and the United States, which have been at the vanguard of military operations in Libya, Juppe said.
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