Clinton urges Kadhafi to deliver democracy not threats

TRIPOLI – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that Moammar Gadhafi deliver democracy instead of threats after the Libyan leader warned Europe of stinging attacks unless NATO halts its air war.

“Instead of issuing threats, Gadhafi should put the well-being and interests of his own people first and he should step down from power and help facilitate a democratic transition,” Clinton said Saturday on a visit to NATO ally Spain, the latest leg of a European tour.

In a speech broadcast by loudspeakers to thousands of supporters in Tripoli’s emblematic Green Square on Friday, the Libyan leader had warned that his loyalists could launch stinging attacks on Europe like “locusts and bees.”

“The Libyan people are capable, one day, of taking the battle to Europe and the Mediterranean,” Gadhafi said.

“They could attack your homes, your offices, your families could become legitimate military targets because you have transformed our offices, headquarters, homes and children into military targets which you say are legitimate,” he continued.

Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez vowed NATO would keep up the pressure on the Libyan leader, regardless of his threats.

“We are working together to protect the Libyan people from the threats and violence that Gadhafi is employing against them. We will stay until we achieve our goals,” she said at a news conference alongside Clinton.

The top US diplomat, meanwhile, said “the NATO-led mission is on track and pressure on Gadhafi is mounting and the rebels have been gaining strength and momentum. We need to see this through.”

Libyan state television said NATO air strikes had “destroyed infrastructure and claimed victims” Saturday in Al-Jafra, a desert region 600 kilometres (360 miles) south of Tripoli.

Explosions were heard late at night in Tajoura, an eastern suburb of the Libyan capital, witnesses told AFP. They said the blasts were due to “coalition bombing.”

Some 300 children rallied in front of invited foreign media outside UN offices to condemn the air strikes.

Gadhafi’s regime has earned notoriety over the four decades since he seized power in 1969, arming militant groups from Northern Ireland to the Philippines, and being held responsible for a string of bombings against Western targets, including in Europe.

The Libyan leader also urged his supporters to retrieve weapons that France supplied to rebels battling his regime from bases in an armed enclave in the strategic Nafusa Mountains, southwest of the capital.

“March on the jebel (mountains) and seize the weapons that the French have supplied,” he said.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said this week’s arms drop was meant only to defend peaceful civilians from Gadhafi’s forces and thus fell in line with existing UN resolutions on the conflict.

“It is not a violation of the UN Security Council resolutions” under which France and other allies launched air strikes and imposed embargoes to protect civilians from Gadhafi, he said.

On Saturday, NATO said it had stepped up its air strikes against Gadhafi’s forces on the front lines around the rebels’ two enclaves in the mainly government-held west — the Nafusa Mountains and Libya’s third-largest city Misrata.

After a retreat from around the plains town of Bir al-Ghanam some 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Tripoli, rebel spokesman Colonel Ahmed Omar Bani said the rebel army would soon try to push the frontline northward.

“In the next two days the (revolutionaries) will come up with answers, things will change on the frontline,” he said.

In the past four days in Gharyan, a government stronghold near the mountains, NATO aircraft struck eight targets, including a military complex used to resupply Gadhafi’s troops, tanks and other military vehicles, the alliance said.

In its daily report for Friday, NATO said it had launched a total of 42 strike sorties over Libya, hitting two tanks near Gharyan and two armed vehicles near Bir al-Ghanam, also near the Nafusa.

In and around Tripoli, it said it had hit a military facility, three radars, two anti-aircraft guns, a missile launcher, four tanks and a command and control vehicle.