Clinton: Gaddafi reaching out to people

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has told ABC News she understood people close to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi were in touch with other states about the situation.

In an interview, she said: “We’ve heard about other people close to him reaching out to people that they know around the world, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, North America, beyond, saying what do we do? How do we get out of this? What happens next?

“I’m not aware that he personally has reached out, but I do know that people allegedly on his behalf have been reaching out.”

Elsewhere, General David Petraeus, Commander of the Nato International Security Assistance Force and US Forces Afghanistan has told Sky News the focus on Libya had not caused a drain on operations elsewhere.

He said: “In recent years, we’ve been able in large measure because of the reduction of US forces in Iraq where we went from 165,000 at the height of the surge, now under 50,000. That has enabled us to reconstitute reserves, to increase so called dwell time for our troopers’ time between deployments.

“For the army during the surge in Iraq it was a year home then another year back in Iraq, we even went to a 15 month tour at one time. We are now at 12 month tours for the army, two years back, in most cases even more than that now.”