France admits arming Libyan rebels
France has become the first country to openly admit it has supplied the Libyan rebels with weapons - a measure officially banned by the UN Security Council resolutions 1970 and 1973.
ґA French military spokesman, Colonel Thierry Burkhard, said the arms, including machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, as well as munitions, were parachuted in to besieged rebels.
According to the official, the deliveries took place in early June in the western Nafusa Mountains, when Gaddafi`s forces encircled the civilians and refused to allow a humanitarian aid corridor there, AP reports.
France has been among the main powers behind the NATO-led air campaign, officially aimed at protecting civilians from assaults by Gaddafi`s forces. However, many view a change of regime in Libya as the main reason of the alliance?s involvement in the country.
The Libyan National Transitional Council last week also received its first tranche of financial help from the international community to the amount $100 million, UK foreign secretary William Hague announced on Wednesday.
The Libyan opposition has asked the West many times to provide financial help for humanitarian needs, such as medicine.
UN resolution 1970, which was adopted on February 26, imposed an arms embargo on the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, preventing weapons from being supplied to anyone in Libya. However, UN resolution 1973, which established a no-fly zone over Libya, allowed "to take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya."
As the unrest has been continuing in Libya since mid-February, the fighting between the forces of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and the rebels, backed by the NATO forces, seems to have reached a stalemate.
ґGeorge Kenney, a former US diplomat, said that France had also apparently shipped a couple of light tanks to the rebels, and that this would only lead to more problems later.
"That was very foolish on the part of France. We do not know who these rebels are. We do not know what they are going to do with these weapons. And I would suspect that some significant percentage of the weapons will find their way into the hands of terrorists and will just become another problem for us to have to deal with later on."
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