International Community Responds To Libyan Unrest
The NATO Defense Ministers will meet this week in Brussels. Libya will likely top the agenda of the meetings. Host Melissa Block speaks with Ivo Daalder, the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO, about Libya. Daalder says NATO's current focus is the humanitarian effort in the country and wouldn't enact a no-fly zone without UN support.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Now to the international community's response. Libya will top the agenda of the NATO defense minister's meeting this week in Brussels. And I'm joined now from Brussels by the U.S. ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder. Welcome to the program.
IVO DAALDER: Oh, my pleasure.
BLOCK: I was just reading a recent post you made on your Twitter feed and it was this in its entirety: Thinking about military intervention, never easy. And for 141 characters or less, that's an understatement, I would say. We're going to give you a chance to amplify on that now.
DAALDER: It isn't easy. In my previous job, when I was an academic, I thought a lot about how and when to intervene. It doesn't get any easier when you're a diplomat.
BLOCK: Well, I want to play you a comment made by the NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen today on this question of intervention. Here he is.
ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN: I can't imagine the international community and the United Nations stand idly by if Gadhafi and his regime continue to attack their own people systematically.
BLOCK: And he went on to say that it may amount to crimes against humanity, what's going on Libya. Ivo Daalder, are you in line with him on that?
DAALDER: So that is already established international precedence. So I fully agree with the secretary general that this is one of those issues where the evidence is beginning to become overwhelming. But the right place to decide that is the International Criminal Court, which is going to make a judgment about this.
BLOCK: But in terms of foreign intervention that would bypass the International Criminal Court that would go to the NATO and the U.N., what would the tipping point be, do you think, for the U.S. to say this is at a point where we need to intervene?
DAALDER: Well, what we're looking at is the full range of options that we have available. For the moment, the media focus that we have here at NATO is on the humanitarian situation. So that is our immediate focus. As you said, our defense ministers will meet at the end of the week, have an opportunity to look at the kind of planning that NATO has now been engaged on on a range of issues, including the issue of a no-fly zone. And have a discussion and possibly reach a decision at that point.
BLOCK: Would NATO authorize enforcing a no-fly zone without the approval of the U.N. Security Council?
DAALDER: I think everybody in NATO would want a U.N. Security Council resolution for a no-fly zone. It provides a good legal basis for doing so. So we would want to have one.
BLOCK: You'd want to have one. The Russians, who have veto power in the Security Council, of course, are balking at that. So assuming the Security Council can't reach a resolution on that, would NATO act on its own?
DAALDER: And indeed over the last few days, we've seen a distinct decrease in air activity inside Libya. So we - a no-fly zone is a possible answer. It can't be the answer. And as such, we need to look at the immediate situation that we confront and have a discussion, which we will, I assume, have when the defense ministers meet about how we can best respond to the situation.
BLOCK: Let's walk through what some of those scenarios might be then, if this is approaching a point where there were crimes against humanity taking place in Libya and a no-fly zone wouldn't prevent them. What military action could the international community take that would stop that?
DAALDER: Well, at this point I'm not going to prejudge what the ministers are going to discuss or decide. But we will look at humanitarian options. How can we help the people who may be stuck or in need of assistance? How can we enforce an arms embargo, a critical role that NATO may, in fact, be able to play on that? And then we're also looking at other options, depending on how the situation evolves.
BLOCK: Ivo Daalder is the U.S. permanent representative to NATO. Ambassador Daalder, thanks very much.
DAALDER: My pleasure.
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