LONDON | World powers agreed Tuesday that Col. Moammar Gadhafi should step down after 42 years as Libya’s ruler but did not discuss arming the rebels who are seeking to oust him.
Top diplomats from up to 40 countries, the United Nations, NATO and the Arab League came to that conclusion Tuesday at crisis talks in London on the future of the North African nation.
“One thing is quite clear and has to be made very clear to Gadhafi: His time is over. He must go,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said. “We must destroy his illusion that there is a way back to business as usual if he manages to cling to power.”
British Foreign Secretary William Hague, however, told reporters the subject of arming rebels simply did not come up.
“That was not one of the subjects for discussion,” Mr. Hague said. “That was not raised at the conference, and it was not on the agenda for discussion.”
Mr. Hague’s comments suggest that the U.N.-backed coalition cobbled together to defend civilians from Col. Gadhafi’s onslaught is still hanging back from throwing its entire weight behind the ill-organized rebels, whose exact makeup and motives remain unclear.
But Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassun al-Thani seemed to leave the door open to arms sales when he suggested that the issue might be revisited if the aerial campaign fell short of its stated goal of protecting Libyan civilians.
“We have to evaluate the airstrike after a while to see if it’s effective,” he said. “We are not inviting any military ground [troops] … but we have to evaluate the situation because we cannot let the people suffer for so long, you know, we have to find a way to stop this bloodshed.”
Qatar, which has recognized the rebels as Libya’s legitimate representatives, also plans to help them sell crude on the international market.
Yet while there has been talk of using Qatar to market Libya’s oil for days, details have remained thin.
Libya’s production relies on joint ventures with foreign companies, including Italy’s Eni SpA, that have evacuated employees from the country, and it’s unclear how or when Qatar could help restart the country’s now-paralyzed energy industry.
Still even the possibility of renewed oil sales from Libya would affect the markets.
While diplomats repeated their appeals for Col. Gadhafi to leave Libya, there were few signs that the international community planned to apply any additional pressure on the Libyan ruler.
Diplomats are considering more sanctions on Gadhafi associates to send a clear message to Col. Gadhafi that he cannot attack civilians with impunity, Mr. Hague said.
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