EUROPEAN COUNCIL president Herman Van Rompuy has called an emergency summit of EU leaders to discuss the turmoil in Libya and the Arab world generally.
The summit, called at the request of French president Nicolas Sarkozy and British prime minister David Cameron, takes place on Friday week. The leaders of the 17 euro zone countries were already due in Brussels that day for talks on reforms to their bailout fund.
The meeting takes place against the backdrop of mounting concern about the humanitarian situation in the country and anxiety about the increasing possibility of civil war.
In diplomatic circles there is widespread acknowledgment that the uprisings against autocratic leaders mean Europe will have to review its entire engagement with North Africa and the Middle East.
“I will make proposals to the European Council on the strategic lines of the EU’s reaction to developments in Libya and in our southern neighbourhood,” Mr Van Rompuy said.
Diplomats do not expect Muammar Gadafy to yield to internal or international pressure to step down and there is concern about the potential for countries such as Italy and Malta to be overwhelmed by migrants fleeing the violence in Libya.
With as many as one and a half million non-Libyan migrants living in the country, tens of thousands of people have already spilled over the country’s borders with Tunisia and Egypt.
Belarus has denied a report which quoted sources saying associates of Col Gadafy made two trips to the country on his aircraft last week before UN and EU sanctions froze his assets.
Diplomats said, however, that the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute report was credible. The institute, which conducts independent research on armaments, also cited sources saying planes carried military equipment from Belarus to southern Libya a couple of weeks ago.
In London, Mr Cameron said the international community must plan to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, despite United States warnings that Libya’s air-defence systems would have to be bombed first.
Mr Cameron said: “It is not acceptable to have a situation where Col Gadafy can be murdering his own people, using aeroplanes and helicopter gunships and the like.
“We have to plan now to make sure that if it happens we can do something to stop it.”
Mr Cameron acknowledged that there were political and legal difficulties that had to be overcome.
Meanwhile, Sir Christopher Meyer, the diplomat who was the UK’s ambassador to Washington when the Iraq invasion was launched in 2003, said a no-fly zone was the only realistic option, but he warned it would require United Nations sanction.
Former foreign secretary Lord Owen said: “There is, in my view, no role for America or for Europe on the ground. It may be other Arab countries have to come and help the people who are trying to establish their democracy.”
France also said foreign military intervention would require a clear UN mandate.
A day after Washington announced it was moving warships and air forces closer to Libya, French foreign minister Alain Juppé said the option of imposing a no-fly zone might be considered but intervention would require agreement at the UN security council.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Washington was “taking no options off the table” so long as the Libyan government continued “to turn its guns on its own people”.
“In the years ahead, Libya could become a peaceful democracy or it could face protracted civil war. The stakes are high,” she said.
European affairs minister Laurent Wauquiez said restricting Gadafy’s funds would be a more effective way of targeting his loyalists than trying to enforce a no-fly zone over a country as large as Libya.
“Libya is twice the size of France. So is it even possible to set up a no-fly zone quickly, and would it be effective?” he said. Instead, a priority should be “cutting off Gadafy’s money because the main risk is that he uses this money to pay an army of mercenaries”, he said.