[D66] NATO warplanes step up attacks on Libya

[Antid Oto]

NATO warplanes step up attacks on Libya
By Bill Van Auken
18 May 2011

NATO has escalated its war against Libya, widening air strikes to hit civilian
government buildings and economic infrastructure.

Early Tuesday, bombs and missiles once again pounded the capital of Tripoli,
destroying buildings near the compound of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The repeated
attacks on the area have all the earmarks of an attempt to bring about “regime
change” by assassinating the Libyan leader.

British air and naval forces have taken the lead in the latest round of
aggression, with Tornado warplanes carrying out air raids and the submarine HMS
Triumph firing Tomahawk missiles at the Libyan capital and other cities.

Among the buildings struck in Tripoli were a police headquarters and the Libyan
government’s Ministry of Popular Inspection and Supervision. Libyan government
officials said that the ministry housed in the latter building was in charge of
investigating official corruption and may have been targeted because of files
stored there detailing corruption on the part of former government officials who
have defected to join the US-backed “rebels” based in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Also struck in the raids was the oil port of Ras Lanouf, which had been briefly
taken by the anti-Gaddafi forces in March before they were pushed back eastward
by troops loyal to the government. According to Libyan television, the attack
damaged methanol tanks, causing them to leak.

According to figures released May 17 by NATO’s Allied Joint Forces Command,
based in Naples, Italy, the Western alliance’s warplanes have carried out nearly
7,000 sorties since March 31, more than 2,700 of them involving air strikes.

The apparent increase in the targeting of non-military installations follows an
interview published in the London Sunday Telegraph with Gen. Sir David Richards,
the senior commander of British military forces.

Richards traveled to Washington last month together with Defense Secretary Liam
Fox for a rare two-on-two meeting with their American counterparts, Admiral Mike
Mullen and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, to discuss war strategy in Libya.

In the Telegraph interview, General Richards urged an escalation in attacks on
Libya’s infrastructure, while asserting that if NATO managed to kill Colonel
Gaddafi by means of a raid on a “command and control center,” that would be
“within the rules.”

In one recent attack, carried out on April 30, warplanes struck a house where
Gaddafi and his wife were present, killing his son and three young grandchildren.

General Richards warned, “If we do not up the ante now there is a risk that the
conflict could result in Gaddafi clinging to power.”

He added, “At present NATO is not attacking infrastructure targets in Libya. But
if we want to increase the pressure on Gaddafi’s regime then we need to give
serious consideration to increasing the range of targets we can hit.”

The British general dismissed any objections that such warfare flew in the face
of the United Nations Security Council resolutions authorizing the use of force
solely for the protection of Libyan civilians, claiming that this could only be
achieved by means of regime change.

“The Prime Minister [David Cameron] and I are on the same page,” he said. “We
are in total agreement that the only solution to this conflict is for Gaddafi to
go.”

Among the more severely hit sections of infrastructure are Libya’s cell phone
facilities.

Libyan officials have charged that the bombing campaign has badly disrupted the
country’s telecommunications systems. Mohammad Bin Ayad, the chairman of the
Libyana cellular phone service provider, said that the attacks have caused $1.25
billion worth of damages to the communications sector.

In response to the attacks, telecommunications workers issued a statement vowing
that they and their families would occupy phone facilities, serving as “human
shields”, to prevent NATO from continuing the attacks.

The statement issued in the name of the 20,000 workers said: “We, the telecoms
workers, are present with our families and children around the clock and in
shifts to protect this utility...to confront any aggression or bombing aimed at
continuing destruction of the communications infrastructure.”

In a telling indication of the human toll being exacted by the US and NATO-led
war, the office of the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Libya
reported Tuesday that more than three quarters of a million people have fled the
country and another 150,000 are internally displaced as a result of the conflict.

“Our feeling is that the longer the crisis continues, the more grave the
situation is for the country,” said the UN coordinator, Panos Moumtzis. He
reported that the UN and the Libyan government had held “very positive”
discussions that he expected would lead to the return of UN humanitarian
agencies to Tripoli.

With the US-NATO intervention now entering its third month, both China and
Russia reiterated calls for a cease-fire and a negotiated settlement of Libya’s
civil war.

“We are keeping a close watch on the situation in Libya, and once again all on
relevant parties to cease fire immediately and solve the current crisis through
peaceful means, such as negotiation and dialogue,” Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokesperson Jiang Yu stated at a press briefing in Beijing Tuesday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met in Moscow with representatives of the
Gaddafi government on Tuesday and said afterwards that he had called for an
immediate end to the use of force.

“The answer we heard cannot be called negative,” Lavrov said. “The only things
that our interlocutors from Tripoli noted today was the necessity of the
insurgents accepting analogous steps and that NATO also stop bombing.”

A statement issued by Russia’s Foreign Ministry Tuesday condemning the
escalation of the NATO bombing campaign cited “alarming reports coming in of new
casualties among the civilian population and an increase in what was already for
this region an unprecedented number of refugees.”

Meanwhile, the McClatchy newspapers published an article Monday entitled
“WikiLeaks cables show that it was all about the oil,” reviewing a number of
classified US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks demonstrating an overriding
concern of US officials over the control of energy resources.

Among them was an April 2008 cable from the US embassy in Rome calling for the
US State and Treasury departments to exert pressure on Paolo Scaroni, the CEO of
the Italian-based energy giant Eni, which is Italy’s largest corporation and is
one-third owned by the Italian government.

The central concern expressed by US officials was over Eni’s dealings with
Gazprom, Russia’s largest company—in which the Russian government holds a
controlling stake—and the biggest extractor of natural gas in the world.

Most troubling for Washington was a deal under which Eni, which had the largest
operations in Libya of any foreign energy company, would facilitate Gazprom’s
access to Libyan oil and gas. The Russian energy giant tendered an offer to the
Libyan government during this same period to buy all of its future oil and gas
production.

At the same time, the two companies agreed to collaborate on the South Stream
pipeline project that would direct gas from Russia across the Black Sea into
western Europe. The project was seen as a direct challenge to the proposed
Nabucco gas pipeline, backed by the US and several European Union governments,
that would funnel Caspian basin gas across Turkey to the West.

Both deals were seen in Washington as threats to US efforts to assert its
hegemony in Eurasia and North Africa by exerting American control over key
energy resources needed by Europe.

The confidential cable called upon the US government to “push the new Berlusconi
government to force Eni to act less as a stalking horse for Gazprom interests.”
It charged that Eni “seems to be working in support of Gazprom’s efforts to
dominate Europe’s energy supply, and against US-supported EU efforts to
diversify energy supply.”

What Washington failed to achieve through diplomatic pressure, it may now have
succeeded in getting by means of military aggression.

Last month, approximately one month into the US-NATO war in Libya, Eni and
Gazprom announced in Moscow that “due to the ongoing situation in Libya” their
deal on joint operations in the energy-rich North African country have been
placed “on temporary hold.”

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/liby-m18.shtml