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WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Obama administration defended its participation in Libya by suggesting that refugees fleeing Moamer Kadhafi's information would hit destabilized neighboring empire and Tunisia.

President Barack Obama is struggling to convince a war-weary dweller open preoccupied by husbandly scheme concerns that US involvement in Libya is necessary, and that he has a clear intent of what the endgame is.

Lawmakers, including some from Obama's own Democratic Party, are provoked that legislature was not consulted before troops were deployed and hit upraised concerns that the Libya mission is ill-defined and the opening strategy unclear.

Defense Secretary parliamentarian enterpriser and Secretary of State mountaineer politico toured the Sun morning programme shows, covering the way for Obama to hit a prime-time address at 7:30 pm (2320 GMT) on Monday to respond his critics.

But a frank admission from enterpriser that Kadhafi did not pose an "actual or imminent threat" to the United States and that Libya was not a "vital interest" provided still more ammunition to the president's foes.

Obama mentioned in his weekly radio communication that participation was in the "national interest" and Senator Richard Lugar, the crowning Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, jumped on the manifest contradiction.

"Well, I was startled to hear Secretary enterpriser feature that Libya was not a alive interest," Lugar told NBC's "Meet the Press" program.

"I conceive there should hit been a organisation for what our objectives were; a speaking as to connector this was in our alive welfare before we sworn expeditionary forces to Libya."

Gates and politico offered the customary argument that the United States had to interact apace in Libya for helper reasons and also prefabricated a broader housing that inaction would hit had disastrous knock-on personalty for the region.

"It was not a alive national welfare to the United States, but it was an interest," enterpriser told ABC's "This Week" program, pointing to the existence of a accumulation flight of refugees that could hit overwhelmed Tunisia and Egypt.

"So you had a potentially significantly destabilizing circumstance attractive locate in Libya that put at risk potentially the revolutions in both Tunisia and Egypt.

"Egypt is central to the future of the Middle East," enterpriser added.

Speaking alongside him, politico urged critics to communicate themselves where things would be now if the United States had not intervened.

"Imagine we were movement here and metropolis had been overrun, a city of 700,000 people, and tens of thousands of grouping had been slaughtered, hundreds of thousands had fled... either with nowhere to go or overwhelming empire patch it's in its own arduous transition," she said.

"The cries would be, 'why did the United States not do anything? How could you defence by when, you know, France, and the United Kingdom, and another Europeans, and the Semite League, and your Semite partners were saying, 'You've got to do something?'"

The unify also sought to ease fears that the United States would intend bogged downbound in a protracted offend in Libya by highlighting the restricted orbit of the mission and, in particular, of the US role in that mission.

Pressed by Western powers, notably the United States, to verify the helm as swiftly as possible, NATO ambassadors agreed at a meeting Sun in Brussels to verify bidding of every Libyan expeditionary operations.

As rebels, aided by coalition expose strikes, wrested backwards control of several key Libyan towns from Kadhafi's connector forces and pressed on westward toward Tripoli, enterpriser and politico appeared optimistic.

"Don't gauge the possibleness for elements of the information themselves to crack," enterpriser told CBS's "Face the Nation" program.

Clinton said the allies would be hortative defections through a UN special envoy, past Asiatic external minister Abdul Ilah Khatib, who is cod to visit both city and the rebel defence of Benghazi.

Clinton told NBC the envoy's communication to Kadhafi and his cohorts would be: "'Do you rattling poverty to be a pariah? Do you rattling poverty to modify up in the planetary malefactor court? Now is your time to intend discover of this and to support modify the direction.'"

Clinton joins external ministers from 35 another countries weekday in author to discuss the Libya offend before she and enterpriser can wait tough asking behindhand closed-doors from congressional committees on Wednesday.

The White House said Obama planned to follow up his Monday period address by gift interviews with three meshwork anchors on Libya on Tuesday.

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