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New
York Times...
Obama Seeks to Unify
Allies as More Airstrikes Rock Tripoli
By Mark Landler and Steven Erlanger
Published March 22, 2011
WASHINGTON — President Obama worked on Tuesday to bridge differences
among allies about how to manage the military campaign in Libya, as
airstrikes continued to rock Tripoli and forces loyal to Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi showed no sign of ending their sieges of rebel-held cities.
On a day when two United States airmen bailed out over Libya and were
rescued after the crash of their fighter jet, Mr. Obama and the leaders
of Britain and France stepped up efforts to work out an accord on who
would be in charge of military operations once the initial onslaught on
Libya’s air defense systems was complete.
Mr. Obama reiterated that the United States would step back from the
leading role within days, but he also said it was confronting the
complexities of running the military campaign with a multilateral force
cobbled together quickly and without a clear understanding among its
members about their roles.
The president expressed confidence that the coalition would resolve
disagreements over the role of NATO, which had flared in recent days
over France’s insistence that the alliance not play a leading role in
the operation. NATO now seems likely to provide “command and control”
functions, but with a separate authority running the operation, which
includes Arab and other non-NATO countries.
“I would expect that over the next several days you will have clarity
and a meeting of the minds of all those who are participating in the
process,” Mr. Obama said in a news conference in El Salvador, where he
was nearing the end of a Latin American trip that has been eclipsed by
the military strikes on forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi.
Even as the Western allies tried to settle management issues, they were
still struggling to corral Arab backing for the campaign. Mr. Obama
telephoned the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, on
Tuesday to nail down his support. So far, Qatar is the only Arab state
to offer fighter jets to help enforce a no-fly zone, and there were
signs that other Arab states were wavering in their support.
The tension and confusion laid bare the unwieldiness of the coalition —
which American officials conceded had been put together on the fly —
even four days into the operation, after the United States had fired
160 Tomahawk missiles and lost its first plane, an F-15E Strike Eagle,
which crashed in the desert after mechanical troubles. The plane’s
two-member crew had minor injuries but was rescued.
“This is complicated,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said to
reporters with him in Moscow. “This command-and-control business is
complicated. We haven’t done something like this, kind of on the fly
before. So it’s not surprising to me that it would take a few days to
get it all sorted out.”
Read the rest of the story at the New York Times
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