A contact group comprising 60 countries, aka “Friends of Libya”, is meeting on Thursday in Paris to discuss the future of the country post-Gaddafi. Envoys from Russia and China – the critics of the NATO campaign – will also attend the conference.
France and Britain, the hosts of the conference, are expected to attempt to deliver a message to the international community that NATO’s costly military intervention in Libya was a success and will guarantee a smooth transition of power while avoiding the mistakes of Iraq.
“The objective is to turn the page and get behind the new authority,” Reuters quoted a French government source as saying. “[Iraq] was a successful military operation, but a failed political transition. We have to learn from that… We have to stand alongside the National Transitional Council, but not impose anything on them.”
The conference agenda is likely to include the discussion of possible loans to Libya’s new governing authority in order to help finance rebuilding of the country’s infrastructure. Several nations have already asked the UN Sanctions Committee to release billions of dollars of Libyan assets frozen by sanctions.
“The first priority is to get the Libyan people’s money back to their governing authority and to them,” Reuters quoted US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland as saying.
The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will also join top officials from other countries to ascertain the needs of the NTC in terms of financial aid and other assistance needed to stabilize Libya, AP reports.
Clinton reportedly hopes to announce that US $1.5 billion of Gaddafi regime assets frozen in the United States have been distributed on behalf of the rebels.
Russia and China – two critics of NATO’s Libya operation – are also sending their representatives to the conference. Moscow has insisted the UN Security Council must play a central role in the post-Gaddafi rebuilding plans.
On Thursday, Russia became the 75th country to officially recognized Libya’s National Transitional Council as the country’s legitimate governing authority.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday that the Paris meeting should help the UN Security Council outline the parameters of international assistance to the Arab state.
Moscow’s envoy Mikhail Margelov points out that Libyans must define their future themselves, through the means of democratic elections.
“The final decision on what Libya is going to become is one for the Libyan people to make, not the world’s politicians who’ve been playing leading parts recently,” he told RT. “The national democratic vote will determine this. And it should be well-prepared and duly carried out. This is where the international community, and Russia in particular, is eager to render active support to the Libyans.”
Oil-for-recognition
And yet, it is not with the sole purpose of putting Libya’s political life and economy back on track that representatives of some 60 countries will be gathering. Major players are making no secret of their eagerness to grab a bigger slice of the Libyan oil pie.
France’s Liberation newspaper reported on Thursday that no sooner had UN resolution 1973 on the “no-fly zone” been adopted, than the NTC approached the French leadership with a tempting offer of 35 per cent of Libya’s oil sector in exchange for “full and constant support.” The offer was made in a letter sent on April 3rd to the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, whose country mediated contacts between Paris and Benghazi.
The newspaper also states that a copy of this letter was forwarded to Amr Mussa, an Egyptian politician who was also the Secretary-General of the Arab League until June 1, 2011. It was he who addressed the UN Security Council back in March with an appeal to establish a no-fly zone over Libya.
Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe dismissed the existence of any such agreements, saying, though, that any preferential treatment dished out to countries that supported the rebels would be logical.
“The NTC did announce officially that during the period of reconstruction preference would be given to those countries which supported it,” Itar-Tass quoted him as saying. “I believe this is logic and fair.”