PRESIDENT BARACK Obama has yesterday that there was “a danger of a stalemate [in Libya] that over time could be bloody”.
He announced yesterday that he had authorised the use of US military aircraft to fly stranded Egyptians from the Libyan-Tunisian border back to Egypt, as well as civilian aircraft chartered by USAid to transport people of other nationalities.
“The biggest priority that we have right now is the tens of thousands of people gathered at the border,” Mr Obama said. “We have to make sure they can get home.” He stressed that he did “not want us hamstrung” in responding to the Libyan crisis and was “looking at every option that’s out there . . . military and non-military”.
Asked whether he was considering a no-flight zone over Libya, to prevent Col Muammar Gadafy bombing his own people, the US leader said: “That is one of the options that we would be looking at.”
France and Britain earlier expressed some support for the idea of a no-flight zone, but Germany said it was opposed.
Three times in the course of a 50-minute press conference with the Mexican president Felipe Calderon, Mr Obama called for Gadafy to step down.
It was the first time that the US leader publicly asked for Gadafy’s departure, although the White House said that this was his position last weekend.
“You have seen with great clarity that he has lost legitimacy with his people,” Mr Obama said.
“Let me be very unambiguous about this. Col Gadafy needs to step down from power and leave. That is good for his country. It is good for his people. It’s the right thing to do.”
The Obama administration has come under pressure from some leading members of Congress to arm the Libyan rebels and declare a no-flight zone over Libya.
Defence secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday that such a zone would require “a big operation in a big country”, starting with the destruction of Libya’s air defences.
Mr Obama yesterday reiterated one of Mr Gates’s arguments, that US intervention would strengthen those in the region who claimed the wave of Arab uprisings was the result of a conspiracy in Washington.
“One of the extraordinary successes of Egypt was the full ownership that the Egyptian people felt for that transformation,” Mr Obama said. “That has served the Egyptian people well. It serves US interests well.
“We did not see anti-American sentiment arising out of that movement in Egypt precisely because they felt that we did not try to engineer or impose a particular outcome.”
Mr Obama repeated warnings by his administration to Gadafy’s entourage. “Those around him have to understand the violence they perpetrate against innocent civilians will be monitored and they will be held accountable for it,” he said.
“To the extent that they are making calculations in their own minds about which way history is moving, they should know history is moving against Col Gadafy.”