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IPFS News Link • WAR: About that War

Libya: Ceasefire or bust

• atimes.com
The so-called Libya contact group - that euphemism defining the minute Western/Gulf emirates "coalition of the willing" - meets in Doha, Qatar, ahead of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ministerial meetings in Berlin, amid an atmosphere of downright farce.

Former Libyan foreign minister and current defector to Britain Moussa Koussa is a stalwart of the Qatar meeting, trying to convince the "rebels" of the Interim National Council (INC) that the only possible solution for the moment implies Colonel Muammar Gaddafi remaining in power.

That also happens to be exactly what mediator Turkey is saying. No wonder the "rebels" and their sponsors - the dashing Arab liberator Anglo-French couple President Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister David Cameron - are fuming, and puzzled.

The head of the African Union (AU) mission to Libya, South African President Jacob Zuma - whose country is the only member of the BRICS group that supported United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 (Brazil, Russia, India and China abstained) - was convinced that Gaddafi had embraced the AU road map, which started with a ceasefire. But there has been no ceasefire so far. The wall of mistrust between Gaddafi and the rebels/NATO tandem has reached Himalayan proportions. NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen keeps stressing Gaddafi "does not keep his promises". Gaddafi is not fool enough to stop fighting while NATO may keep on bombing.

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