Britain pushing for asset seizures, travel bans and other sanctions, says prime minister
David Cameron moved to regain lost ground over his handling of the Libyan crisis by leading calls for sanctions, asset freezes and war crimes tribunals against Colonel Gaddafi.
The prime minister has faced criticism over the ponderous pace of the Foreign Office rescue of stranded Britons in Libya since he left on a four-day tour of the Gulf to strike energy and defence deals. The trip had been planned well before the unrest across the Middle East.
Relatives of Britons stuck in Libya and opposition politicians have accused the government of being in its handling of the evacuationsincompetent. The normally loyal tabloid press has been scathing of the Foreign Office failures.
Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, was more restrained, saying merely there has been a "worrying whiff of incompetence about the way this government is handling this issue".
Cameron said six flights had left Libya in the past 24 hours carrying Britons, and a navy frigate, HMS Cumberland, had evacuated UK citizens and other foreigners from the port of Benghazi. He said he had also asked a navy destroyer, HMS York, "to go into the area to help out as necessary".
"We will do everything we can today and tomorrow to help those people and planning is under way to do just that." Cameron said Britain was pushing, via the UN, for asset seizures, travel bans and other sanctions, and raised the prospect of "crimes against humanity" being investigated. He warned: "No one is beyond the reach of international law."
Cameron's rhetoric has been stifled by the need to protect British citizens trapped in Libya. Downing Street stressed that any military interventions would be only to protect British citizens and not to topple the regime or threaten Gaddafi's forces.
Meanwhile, it emerged that Gaddafi's regime forced the government to pay "bribes" to fly in to rescue Britons.
A Foreign Office spokesman confirmed it paid "increased fees" to land at Tripoli airport to save hundreds left for days without help. "The charges have increased in the current situation," he said. "We have had to pay them, the alternative being to leave hundreds of British nationals stranded in Tripoli."
William Hague, the foreign secretary, will go to the UN human rights council in Geneva alongside Hillary Clinton on Monday to lead efforts to bring people to account for war crimes. He said: "The message is clear: that there will be a day of reckoning for those guilty of the appalling atrocities. The world will act together to hold them to account."
Cameron acknowledged that the government had had a difficult week, with the poor response leading to calls for the strategic defence review to be reopened.
Senior government sources were adamant that the problems were caused by technical failures and did not highlight any weaknesses in the Downing Street operation. They blamed the 11th-hour decision of British Airways and BMI to cancel flights to Tripoli. This undermined the government's standard response to such crises, which is to stand back from immediately chartering aircraft because that usually "collapses" scheduled flights.
But Cameron is acutely aware that his presence in the Gulf, as the government struggled to evacuate British citizens, gave the impression that he was out of touch. This explained his insistence, while in the Gulf, that technology allowed him to remain firmly in charge. Downing Street let it be known that he conducted a series of conference calls from Doha and Muscat with Hague and defence secretary Liam Fox.
Hague is privately furious with the Foreign Office. One senior Tory said: "I think it is quite remarkable that William has refrained from bad-mouthing his own department. There is a gobsmacking lack of grip in the Foreign Office It is sheer incompetence. What this has done is confirm the many weaknesses in the culture and traditions of the Foreign Office. These have been creeping up, crab-like, on William for some time. It has finally hit William."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/feb/25/david-cameron-libya-evacuation
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