Britain and US to step up pressure on Gaddafi

BRITAIN and the United States planned to step up military pressure on Muammar Gaddafi, as the Libyan leader’s army pressed its bloody siege of the rebel-held city of Misrata.

More than a month of air strikes in a British and French-led NATO mission to protect Libyan civilians have failed to dislodge Gaddafi or bring big gains for anti-government rebels who hold much of east Libya, raising fears of a lingering stalemate.

Defence Secretary Liam Fox and Chief of the Defence Staff General David Richards are meeting US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington.

“The meeting will be about how we can put military pressure on the regime, and that will include the tooth and the tail — the people pulling the trigger to kill civilians in Misrata and the people supplying them,” a Ministry of Defence source said.

As Libya has descended into civil war, counter-attacks by government forces have underlined Gaddafi will not go the same way as fellow leaders in Egypt and Tunisia did in the tide of popular unrest that has rolled across the Arab world.

The Libyan leader has vowed to fight to the death.

The war has split the oil producer, Africa’s fourth biggest, into a government-held western area round the capital Tripoli and an eastern region held by ragged but dedicated rebels.

Tripoli was quiet yesterday after a NATO strike on Gaddafi’s compound in the capital which Libyan officials said was an attempt to kill the leader who is fighting an uprising against his 41-year rule of this oil producing desert state.

A rebel spokesman in Misrata said there had been fresh fighting there.