EU POLICY:THE GADAFY regime has told the EU authorities it is willing to facilitate an international mission in Libya to investigate human rights abuses.
The offer is being treated with scepticism in Brussels because Gadafy forces are being blamed for most of the violence.
It came as EU governments agreed in principle to toughen financial sanctions against Tripoli by widening their remit to include a sovereign wealth fund and other commercial entities.
EU foreign ministers and heads of state and governments will take stock of the situation when they gather in Brussels for respective emergency meetings tomorrow and Friday.
As they prepare to rewrite EU policy on the north African region by providing incentives for democratic reforms, a senior EU official described the atmosphere in Tripoli as “the quiet before the tempest”. There is some concern in diplomatic circles that any move to go down the road of an investigation facilitated by Col Gadafy might be no more than a ploy to weaken international pressure.
Although diplomats are considering whether they should pursue the Libyan offer, a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said there was no change in Europe’s position that Col Gadafy should stand down immediately.
He denied that the Libyan offer to a European External Action Service (EAS) diplomat in any way undermined the policy of isolating the Gadafy regime. “We have been very clear about our attitude to the Gadafy regime. The Gadafy regime must go,” he said.
“There was no contact of any sort with any political forces on either side of the debate. A brief technical meeting was held with an official . . . It was a purely technical meeting.”
A European official said the message that Tripoli would co-operate fully with an independent inquiry was made by the director general for European affairs in the Libyan foreign ministry, Ahmed Jarrod.
On Monday he met EAS diplomat Agostino Miozzo, who, as head of crisis response in the EU’s new diplomatic corps, was on a two-day fact-finding mission to Tripoli.
The European official said Mr Jarrod pledged that Tripoli would provide “assistance and security” to a rapid EU or UN mission to investigate human rights abuses. There would be no restriction on the movements of such a mission, Mr Jerrod indicated.
The European official said Mr Miozzo and senior diplomats from the eight EU states whose embassies remain open in Tripoli favour such a mission. The states include Italy and Malta, which are concerned they could be overwhelmed by migrants fleeing the violence in Libya. The others are Cyprus, Greece, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.
Baroness Ashton’s spokesman said EU policy on Libya would be made in Brussels by EU leaders. “That is where EU policy is made. It is not made in Tripoli. It is not made anywhere else,” he said.
Meanwhile, in Strasbourg, one of the most senior members of the National Libyan Council gave a briefing to members of the European Parliament yesterday in which he asked for military and humanitarian aid and pleaded with the EU to recognise it as the “only legitimate representative” of the Libyan people.
Last Saturday, Mahmoud Jebril was named head of a three-member crisis committee aimed at streamlining the council’s decision-making process, and on a 24-hour visit to Strasbourg he rubbished Col Gadafy’s claims that a dangerous political vacuum would be created if he was ousted.
“We have a choice today between the power to kill or the power to live,” Mr Jebril said. Europe also needed to make a choice “between the right of power and the power of right”.
He described the humanitarian situation as “beyond imagination” and repeatedly told the packed briefing the Gadafy regime had lost all legitimacy once it had started committing “genocide” on its own people.
Mr Jebril called for the immediate implementation of a no-fly zone and a supply of military equipment for rebel forces, but warned against direct military intervention. “Libyan history should be written by Libyan hands, and you should empower us to do it.”