India: To arm or not to arm

The Times of India

To arm Libya rebels or not? US debates
By Mark Landler, Elisabeth Bumiller & Steven Lee Myers, NYT News Service

WASHINGTON: The Obama administration is engaged in a fierce debate over whether to supply weapons to the rebels in Libya, senior officials said on Tuesday, with some fearful that providing arms would deepen US involvement in a civil war and that some fighters may have links to al-Qaida .

The debate has drawn in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, these officials said, and has prompted an urgent call for intelligence about a ragtag band of rebels who are waging a town-by-town battle against colonel Muammar Gaddafi, from a base in eastern Libya long suspected of supplying terrorist recruits. "Al-Qaida in that part of the country is obviously an issue ," a senior official said.

Fears about the rebels surfaced publicly on Capitol Hill when the military commander of Nato admiral James Stavridis, told a senate hearing that there were "flickers" in intelligence reports about the presence of Qaida and Hezbollah members among the anti-Gaddafi forces. While eastern Libya was the center of Islamist protests in 1990s, it is unclear how many groups retain ties to al-Qaida .

The French government, which has led the international charge against Gaddafi, has placed mounting pressure on the US to provide greater assistance to the rebels. The question of how best to support the opposition dominated an international conference about Libya on Tuesday in London.

In a reflection of the seriousness of the administration's debate, Obama said that he was keeping his options open on arming the rebels. "I'm not ruling it out, but I'm also not ruling it in," Obama told NBC News. "We're still making an assessment partly about what Gaddafi's forces are going to be doing. Keep in mind, we've been at this now for nine days."

But some administration officials argue that supplying arms would further entangle the United States in a drawnout civil war because the rebels would need to be trained to use any weapons, even relatively simple rifles and shoulder-fired anti-armor weapons. This could mean sending trainers.

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