NATO's operation in Libya was "a big success" that showed Europe's ability to lead, but the US military was crucial to the effort, the alliance's Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Friday.

He made the comments to journalists following a meeting in Paris with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who pushed for NATO's backing of the National Transitional Council (NTC) that routed Moamer Kadhafi's regime last week.

"We are in agreement that the NATO operation in Libya was a big success," Rasmussen said.

"The positive lesson to be learned from our operation is that it demonstrated European leadership. This is a strengthening of our alliance," he added.

While highlighting the role some European leaders played in rallying political support behind NATO's raids on Kadhafi targets, Rasmussen also said the operation "needed the unique capacities of the United States".

He further insisted the campaign "strictly conformed with the United Nations mandate".

A UN Security Council resolution that cleared the way for the NATO bombings stressed protecting civilians from the Kadhafi regime that had vowed to slaughter its enemies.

Some leaders, notably in China, Russia and across Africa, lamented that the mission strayed from a civilian protection mandate and became simply a military campaign in support of the NTC forces working to oust Kadhafi.

Rasmussen said NATO would decide when to formally end the operation based on political developments in Libya and on whether the NTC proved capable of protecting the Libyan people.

Bulgaria to claim back pardoned Libyan debt: PM
Sofia (AFP) Sept 2, 2011 - Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said Friday that he would claim back 56.6 million dollars of Libyan communist-era debt that Sofia agreed to write off in 2007.

Bulgaria had pardoned the whole of Libya's long-unserviced debt in exchange for the release of five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death over an AIDS epidemic at a children's hospital in Benghazi.

"The Bulgarian state will insist to have this debt of several dozen million (dollars) reimbursed, as Bulgaria should not in any way lose this money," Borisov was cited as saying by Focus news agency.

After the July 2007 release of the five nurses, Bulgaria announced it was writing off Libya's debt as aid, to "pursue the renovation of medical infrastructure and the treatment of the AIDS-infected children".

But Borisov, whose right-wing government took power in July 2009, has always qualified the debt cancellation as "racket".

The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor spent over eight years in a Libyan jail for allegedly infecting 438 children with HIV-tainted blood at a paediatric hospital in Benghazi.

The case sparked an international outcry, eventually leading to the medics' release and return to Bulgaria on July 24, 2007, where they were immediately pardoned by Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov.

Bulgaria also recently announced it was resuming a probe into claims by the six that they were tortured by Libyan police into confessing their guilt.

Former foreign minister Ivaylo Kalfin, who took part in the negotiations that led to the medics' release, on Friday reproached Borisov for "not knowing the facts, or international law".

"Bulgaria cancelled the accumulated Libyan debt before (the fall of Bulgaria's communist regime in) 1989, which had never been recognised by Tripoli," Kalfin said.

"Instead, Bulgaria should ask the future Libyan government for a clear political declaration of the Bulgarian medics' innocence ... and say that the trial in Libya was a set-up."

Kalfin, a candidate in Bulgaria's presidential election next month, said he would like to see a new trial to exonerate the medics.

Related Links

Tweet