THE GUARDIAN: Some diplomats keen to undertake evaluation mission, but others see it as ploy to weaken demands that Gaddafi step down
The Gaddafi regime has invited the European Union to send teams of monitors to Libya to undertake an "independent evaluation" of the situation, according to senior EU officials.
Leading diplomats from the eight EU countries with embassies still operating in Libya are strongly in favour of the "evaluation mission", which could be performed jointly with the United Nations. But other officials in Brussels are sceptical, suspecting a ruse by the Libyan regime aimed at weakening European and US demands that Gaddafi step down.
Agostino Miozzo, an Italian doctor who heads the EU diplomatic service's crisis management office, returned on Monday from a 48-hour trip to Tripoli where the regime offered the monitoring mission.
"Libya's Europe minister suggested a UN or EU independent evaluation in Libya as soon as possible," said a senior EU official.
The Libyans promised full support with logistics, organisation and security, and pledged that the monitors would be free to go anywhere in the country, the official said.
All remaining EU ambassadors in Tripoli – which include the Italian, but not the German, French or British – strongly supported the offer, the official said. >>> Ian Traynor in Brussels | Tuesday, March 08, 2011
THE GUARDIAN: Gaddafi's defectors denounce 'government of Mussolini and Hitler': Some of the former Libyan ministers and diplomats who have turned on the regime of Muammar Gaddafi >>> David Sharrock | Saturday, February 26, 2011
