As Muammar Qaddafi’s forces push east and bare down on opposition rebels, the White House continues to deflect calls for a no-fly zone in Libya, instead offering up an entirely new option Tuesday.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. is trying to find ways to free up some of billions of dollars of assets seized from the Libyan leader’s government to provide help for the opposition. He was short on details about the plan as reporters peppered him with questions about whether the tide has already turned in Qaddafi’s favor.
“I don’t have a military assessment for you,” Carney said. “We’re exploring ways for authorities to free up seized assets to see if we can free that up to the opposition … this is one of the options” under consideration.
President Barack Obama also planned to meet his national security team Tuesday afternoon to discuss how to apply more pressure on Qaddafi to step down as NATO meets to discuss options for intervention, including the imposition of a no-fly zone.
Libyan rebels met with Clinton last night in Paris and asked the Secretary to launch airstrikes on their behalf, offer military aid and institute a no-fly zone, NBC’s Andrew Mitchell reported, but it’s clear the U.S. will not act unilaterally without broad international consensus.
“The best outcome will come when the actions taken in third-party countries are done in consensus with international partners,” he said.
Carney continued to stress the importance of international support in his briefing with reporters and claimed the administration acted swiftly — “the likes of which the world has never seen” — to amass international support against Qaddafi.
“We have acted with the utmost urgency … together with our international partners to put pressure Muammar Gaddafi and his regime,” he told reporters.
Carney also said the U.S. has sent 30 experts from the National Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy to Japan to help assess the deteriorating state of the country’s Fukushima nuclear plant.
President Obama remains committed to a diversified approach to meeting U.S. energy demands, which includes nuclear, Carney said, adding that the President has asked the NRC to evaluate the lessons learned in Japan and incorporate them in our reviews, which the agency already does on an ongoing basis.
“The President has added his voice — a singular and substantive voice — to the need to do that,” Carney said.
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