France rejected on Friday US criticism of Europe's performance in the Nato operation against Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi as the US Congress expressed its unease by voting down further funding. Qadhafi's government in Tripoli has managed to stay in power despite months of Nato air operations to weaken his rule and help rebels based mainly in eastern Libya who have tried to advance on the west.
Reports of civilian deaths have exacerbated the public divisions between Western governments, as they ponder the future of a military commitment with no clear end in sight. War-fatigued lawmakers in the US House of Representatives took a symbolic swipe at President Barack Obama's Libya policy by rejecting a resolution that would have authorised his limited military intervention against Qadhafi for a year.
Against the background of US discontent as Obama prepares for a reelection campaign next year, outgoing US Defence Secretary Robert Gates earlier this month attacked the EU nations for lacking military muscle - comments that provoked a rebuttal on Friday from French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
"It was particularly inappropriate for Mr Gates to say that, and what is more, completely false, given what is going in Libya," Sarkozy told reporters at an EU summit in Brussels. While the United States has stepped back from a leading role in the strike mission Nato took over on March 31, it has continued to provide essential assets, including reconnaissance planes, air-to-air refuelling planes and armed drones.
"I think his retirement may have led him to not examine the situation in Libya very closely because, whatever people want to say, I don't have the impression that the Americans are doing the bulk of the work in Libya," Sarkozy said. Gates is due to retire at the end of the month.
Discord among the Europeans over the Nato operation spilled into the public arena earlier this week when Italy called for a suspension of hostilities to allow humanitarian access and Britain, France and others loudly rejected the idea. The US Congress stopped short of trying to bar US forces from continuing to carry out air strikes and Senate approval for the Republican-led House vote on Libya war funding is unlikely. But criticism has been building in Congress of US involvement in Libya and Obama's refusal to ask Congress for its consent.
The Nato-led bombing campaign has so far failed to dislodge Qadhafi and is causing concerns about civilian casualties, its financial cost and even its impact on world oil supplies as Libyan exports are cut off. The loss of Libyan oil output since February represented a greater disruption to global oil supply than the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, an International Energy Agency official told Reuters Insider TV.
In a defiant state television audio broadcast this week, Qadhafi said he would fight until the end, but a rebel spokesman was quoted on Friday as saying indirect negotiations were being pursued that could allow him to stay in Libya. In the latest of a string of defections, 19 police and army officers were among a group of Libyan refugees who arrived in Tunisia by boat on Thursday, Tunisian news agency TAP reported.
Qadhafi allies have strongly denounced such defections. "Anyone who defects or refuses to take up arms is an apostate ... and this applies to all Libyans," preacher Mohamed al-Matri said in a live broadcast of the Friday sermon from Cordoba mosque in the town of Sirte. In Benghazi, dozens of rebel supporters freed by Qadhafi arrived on a ship from Western Libya in an exchange that could mark the beginning of broader talks between the adversaries.
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