US and Britain to step up pressure on Qadhafi

British and US officials met on Tuesday to discuss how to step up military pressure on Muammar Qadhafi, as the Libyan leader's army fought fierce clashes with rebels in besieged Misrata. More than a month of air strikes in a British and French-led Nato mission have failed to dislodge Qadhafi or bring major gains for anti-government rebels who hold much of east Libya, raising fears of a stalemate.
British Defence Secretary Liam Fox and Britain's Chief of the Defence Staff General David Richards met US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington. "The meeting will be about how we can put military pressure on the regime, and that will include the tooth and the tail - the people pulling the trigger to kill civilians in Misrata and the people supplying them," a Ministry of Defence source said. Planes flattened a building in Qadhafi's compound on Monday in what his officials called an assassination attempt. Nato denies trying to kill him.
After the Washington talks, Gates said the coalition was not targeting Qadhafi specifically. Fox said there had been some "momentum" in the Libyan conflict in recent days. Western forces have run out of obvious targets to bomb, say analysts, without achieving a clear military result. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the coalition of exceeding its UN mandate to protect civilians.
"They said they didn't want to kill Qadhafi. Now some officials say, yes, we are trying to kill Qadhafi," Putin said during a visit to Denmark. "Who permitted this, was there any trial? Who took on the right to execute this man? "Is there a lack of such crooked regimes in the world? What, are we going to intervene in all these conflicts? Look at Africa, look at Somalia," he said. "Are we going to bomb everywhere and conduct missile strikes?"
Libya's state news agency Jana said Tripoli had urged Russia to call an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, where Moscow has a permanent seat. As Libya has descended into civil war, counter-attacks by government forces have underlined that Qadhafi has no intention of being overthrown like the leaders in Egypt and Tunisia in the tide of unrest that has rolled across the Arab world. The Libyan leader has vowed to fight to the death, blaming foreign powers and al Qaeda for the insurgency.
The war has split the oil producer, Africa's fourth biggest, into a government-held western area round the capital Tripoli and an eastern region held by ragged but dedicated rebels. Troops loyal to Qadhafi have extended their campaign to pound Berber towns in the Western Mountains while battling rebels around the port of Misrata, apparently with the aim of severing the western city from its one lifeline, the sea.