© Reuters
The calls came as Col Gaddafi was reported to have strengthened his grip on power by repatriating billions of dollars in overseas assets that should have been frozen by UN sanctions.
On Sunday, there was growing pressure on Coalition forces to directly target Col Gaddafi with military strikes.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican member of the Senate Armed Services committee, said that the quickest way to end the emerging stalemate was to "cut the head of the snake off". He said: "The people around Gaddafi need to wake up every day wondering, 'Will this be my last?'
Senator John McCain, who visited Libya at the weekend, also said that the Libyan dictator should be targeted but argued that it was more important to increase American firepower over Libya. He said: "It's pretty obvious to me that the US has got to play a greater role on the air power side. Our Nato allies neither have the assets, nor frankly the will - there's only six countries of the 28 in Nato that are actively engaged in this situation."
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, also on Sunday refused to rule out using remote-controlled American drones to assassinate Col Gaddafi. Mr Hague said "who and what is a legitimate target depends on their behaviour." However, he denied that there was a stalemate in Libya and ruled out proposals to partition the country.
Mr Hague said he was still hopeful about sanctions beginning to undermine the regime, despite the reports of Libya circumventing the UN-led financial crackdown.
The European Union and United States have barred access to more than $60 billion in Libyan bank accounts and funds but other nations have done little or nothing to prevent Col Gaddafi and his associates sustaining themselves.
Col Gaddafi has moved billions of dollars back to Tripoli since the rebellion began in mid-February, according to European, American and United Nations officials who spoke to the Los Angeles Times.
The full scale of sanctions-busting is unknown, partly because many investments in companies and financial institutions hide Col Gaddafi's identity.
Libya's circumvent of the sanctions has complicated Nato's efforts to end Col Gaddafi's four decades in power. His ability to siphon off cash has also hampered attempts to persuade his advisers and military commanders to flee.
Officials said the case was a cautionary one about the limits of sanctions and could be compared with Saddam Hussein's success at getting around international sanctions in the years before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Kenya and Turkey are among the countries with strong economic ties to Libya that have resisted carrying out the freeze, mandated by UN Security Council resolutions in February and March. A number of other African countries have also been reluctant.
China, India and Russia, three of the world's biggest economies, have resisted European and American attempts to expand the sanctions. They argue that such actions could damage their own industries.
A UN diplomat told the "Los Angeles Times" that "only a handful" of governments had reported back to the Security Council enforcement committee, which oversees the sanctions, that they had blocked access to Libyan assets.
"We've done pretty well," the diplomat said. "But when you're dealing with somebody as sophisticated as Gaddafi, with such sprawling commercial interests, this has been an uphill struggle.... It's been hard." Under UN rules, governments don't have to report their efforts to comply with sanctions until late June.
This four-month delay "is a major weak flank in the system", the diplomat said, and Gaddafi "understands the system".
This is THE BIGGEST ARMED ROBBERY
of the gangsters of the "American Dream"
with the bandits of the "European Dream"
in a typical BUSINESS ASSO.:
--Oil reserves estimated at 60 billion barrels.
--Natural gas resereves estimated at about 1,500 billion c.m.
--Wealth fund...rising to more than $150 billion
(Among others)
Two Dreams:
Two Armed Robberies
which were meticulously planned long,
long time ago.
But in order to obtain the booty
they need to kill their owners:
-The Libyan State and government,
-The Libyan people that oppose and resist
such assault by gunpoint.
--And, of course, the murder of Gadafi.
THERE IS NO OTHER WAY:
KILLING IS THE ONLY FORM
TO GET THE OTHER'S RICHES
And the riches that the Gangsters of the
"American Dream" and the "European Dream",
ARE GOING TO STEAL ARE THESE:
"The objective of the war against Libya is not just its oil reserves (now estimated at 60 billion barrels), which are the greatest in Africa and whose extraction costs are among the lowest in the world, nor the natural gas reserves of which are estimated at about 1,500 billion cubic meters. In the crosshairs of "willing" of the operation “Unified Protector” there are sovereign wealth funds, capital that the Libyan state has invested abroad.
The Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) manages sovereign wealth funds estimated at about $70 billion U.S., rising to more than $150 billion if you include foreign investments of the Central Bank and other bodies. But it might be more. Even if they are lower than those of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, Libyan sovereign wealth funds have been characterized by their rapid growth. When LIA was established in 2006, it had $40 billion at its disposal. In just five years, LIA has invested over one hundred companies in North Africa, Asia, Europe, the U.S. and South America: holding, banking, real estate, industries, oil companies and others.
In Italy, the main Libyan investments are those in UniCredit Bank (of which LIA and the Libyan Central Bank hold 7.5 percent), Finmeccanica (2 percent) and ENI (1 percent), these and other investments (including 7.5 percent of the Juventus Football Club) have a significance not as much economically (they amount to some $5.4 billion) as politically.
Libya, after Washington removed it from the blacklist of “rogue states,” has sought to carve out a space at the international level focusing on "diplomacy of sovereign wealth funds." Once the U.S. and the EU lifted the embargo in 2004 and the big oil companies returned to the country, Tripoli was able to maintain a trade surplus of about $30 billion per year which was used largely to make foreign investments. The management of sovereign funds has however created a new mechanism of power and corruption in the hands of ministers and senior officials, which probably in part escaped the control of the Gadhafi himself: This is confirmed by the fact that, in 2009, he proposed that the 30 billion in oil revenues go "directly to the Libyan people." This aggravated the fractures within the Libyan government.
U.S. and European ruling circles focused on these funds, so that before carrying out a military attack on Libya to get their hands on its energy wealth, they took over the Libyan sovereign wealth funds. Facilitating this operation is the representative of the Libyan Investment Authority, Mohamed Layas himself: as revealed in a cable published by WikiLeaks. On January 20 Layas informed the U.S. ambassador in Tripoli that LIA had deposited $32 billion in U.S. banks. Five weeks later, on February 28, the U.S. Treasury “froze” these accounts. According to official statements, this is "the largest sum ever blocked in the United States," which Washington held "in trust for the future of Libya." It will in fact serve as an injection of capital into the U.S. economy, which is more and more in debt. A few days later, the EU "froze" around 45 billion Euros of Libyan funds.
The assault on the Libyan sovereign wealth funds will have a particularly strong impact in Africa. There, the Libyan Arab African Investment Company had invested in over 25 countries, 22 of them in sub-Saharan Africa, and was planning to increase the investments over the next five years, especially in mining, manufacturing, tourism and telecommunications. The Libyan investments have been crucial in the implementation of the first telecommunications satellite Rascom (Regional African Satellite Communications Organization), which entered into orbit in August 2010, allowing African countries to begin to become independent from the U.S. and European satellite networks, with an annual savings of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Even more important were the Libyan investment in the implementation of three financial institutions launched by the African Union: the African Investment Bank, based in Tripoli, the African Monetary Fund, based in Yaoundé (Cameroon), the African Central Bank, with Based in Abuja (Nigeria). The development of these bodies would enable African countries to escape the control of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, tools of neo-colonial domination, and would mark the end of the CFA franc, the currency that 14 former French colonies are forced to use. Freezing Libyan funds deals a strong blow to the entire project. The weapons used by "the willing" are not only those in the military action called “Unified Protector.”
Il Manifesto, April 22, 2011
Translated from Italian by John Catalinotto
Manlio Dinucci is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Manlio Dinucci.
Global Research, April 24, 2011
Il Manifesto (translated from Italian) - 2011-04-22