Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Libya gives safe passage to UN

Libya’s government has granted “safe passage” for United Nations teams in Misrata, the UN said, even as Muammar Qaddafi’s forces pounded the besieged city with rockets and shells amid NATO's accusations that government forces were targeting civilians from the roofs of mosques.

The UN said it wanted to assess the humanitarian situation on the ground in Misrata, which loyalist troops have been trying to overrun for the past six weeks in heavy fighting which a doctor said had killed more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians, the Agence-France Press reported.

With thousands clamoring to escape the port city, about 215 kilometers (130 miles) east of Tripoli, Britain said it will charter ships to pick up 5,000 migrant workers after a ferry rescued nearly 1,000 on Monday.
Deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq said the safe passage was part of an accord on humanitarian access to the capital and other Libyan cities secured in Tripoli on Sunday by UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos.

Colonel Qaddafi’s government also agreed to let a UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs mission into Misrata, UN humanitarian spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker told AFP.

Two large blasts were heard in Misrata late on Monday, thought to have been from rockets targeting the port area where plumes of smoke billowed into the night sky.

Misrata’s population is estimated at 550,000 people out of Libya’s total population of 5.5 million.

Fighting also raged into night in Zawiya, around 15 kilometers southwest of Misrata’s city center, with heavy incoming fire pounding the residential district, an AFP reporter said.

The head of NATO’s military operations in Libya on Monday accused forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi of hiding in hospitals and firing on civilians from the roofs of mosques in the protest-held city of Misrata.

Misrata, Libya’s third largest city, has been under siege for seven weeks by Colonel ‘military, during which hundreds of civilians are thought to have been killed. Evacuees say conditions are becoming increasingly desperate.

“The regime’s forces have used snipers on top of mosques, they are hiding beside hospitals, they have got their armored vehicles in schools and, in fact, they have even taken their uniforms off,” Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Reuters quoted him.

Mr. Bouchard, a Canadian, called the tactics used by Mr. Qaddafi’s forces as “underhanded” and “immoral,” and said he was concerned about the humanitarian situation in Misrata.

“There is some suffering, but I can assure you of one thing: the suffering would have been much greater if we (NATO) were not there ... the deaths would be in the thousands,” he said.

Opposition leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil was meanwhile set to meet with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy on Tuesday, on a visit to Libya’s former colonial ruler. Italy has formally recognized the opposition to Colonel Qaddafi.

Mr. Jalil, a former justice minister who was critical of abuses under Mr. Qaddafi, was expected in Rome after a visit to Qatar on his first foreign tour in his new role.

On the other hand, Morocco hosted a visit by a Libyan deputy foreign minister on Monday, a rare diplomatic link between Colonel Qaddafi’s government and one of the staunch allies of the Western coalition determined to overthrow him.

Morocco has been one of the small number of Arab countries and the only North African state openly involved in talks with Western powers over the Libyan crisis.

State-run 2M television said Foreign Minister Taieb Fassi Fihri of Morocco met Omran Boukraa, the Libyan deputy foreign minister in charge of Arab relations, in Rabat on Monday.

“Mr. Fihri ... reiterated Morocco’s commitment to full respect for Libya’s territorial integrity and national unity ... It is within that spirit that Morocco took part in international meetings in Paris, London and recently in Doha,” 2M quoted the foreign ministry as saying in a statement.

The ministry did not say how Mr. Boukraa had reached Rabat. A no-fly zone imposed by the coalition restricts travel from Libya.

(Abeer Tayel of Al Arabiya

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