Clinton role called critical in Libya

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton played a key role in the success of the revolution that toppled the regime of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, observers say. The Washington Post reports her pivotal role began early in the uprising when France sent warplanes in March to attack the Libyan city of Benghazi, 3 hours before the NATO campaign officially began. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi complained France upstaged NATO and he threatened to cut off access to Italian air bases critical to the alliance's planes. "It nearly broke up the coalition," a European diplomat told the Post. But Clinton mended fences behind the scenes in the coalition's Libya air campaign, now seen as a major foreign policy success for the Obama administration. The Post said she intervened in differences between Obama Cabinet members and NATO partners, won key backing from Arab countries and helped the rebels in conveying their message. Early in the rebellion, Clinton, like others in the administration, held out hopes Gadhafi could fall without Western intervention. But after the former leader's loyalists defeated rebels in towns across Libya, the rebels appealed for help from the West, including a military no-fly zone. Other countries in Europe supported intervention and began work on a U.N. Security Council resolution allowing use of force in Libya. But the Obama administration remained unconvinced, and then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates opposed military intervention while Clinton told aides the no-fly zone in itself could worsen the situation in in Libya. Clinton came up with conditions including a formal request by Arab states asking for U.N. Approval of the no-fly zone. She then met in Paris in March with foreign ministers of the Group of Eight countries, Mahmoud Jibril, the head of the National Transitional Council, and Arab states, about their willingness to send warplanes into the no-fly zone. She also met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose country could block U.N. intervention through a veto. When she left for Paris, a State Department official said, she had no instructions from the White House on whether to support "strong action" in Libya. But she soon became a "strong advocate" for U.S. Intervention, an administration official said. And in early July when rebels said they had run out of money for weapons, good and supplies, Clinton went against the advice of State Department lawyers and persuaded Obama to grant full diplomatic recognition to the rebels, giving them access to billions of dollars in Gadhafi's frozen accounts.