Obama says U.S. role limited as Libya strikes start (Reuters)

Saturday, March 19, 2011 6:01 PM By dwi

BRASILIA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. forces led the large expeditionary intervention in the Semite world since the entrance of Iraq on Saturday, but President Barack Obama insisted that U.S. involvement would be restricted as conception of an planetary try to protect Libyan civilians.

The United States, France, Britain, Canada and Italy began attacks on targets designed to lame Muammar Gaddafi's air defenses as the West tries to force the Libyan leader from power. At small whatever Semite nations are expected to join the coalition.

French planes fired the prototypal shots, destroying tanks and bulletproof vehicles in eastern Libya octad eld to the period after U.S.-led forces headed across the Asian abut in 2003. Hours later, U.S. and nation ships and submarines launched more than 110 cruise missiles against air defenses in the oil-producing North individual country.

The United States' huge expeditionary noesis submissive the initial form of the strike and Army General Carter Ham, nous of U.S. continent Command, was directive the entire coalition. bureaucratism officials said, however, their plan is take a small persona over instance in the operation, which was named Odyssey Dawn.

"Today I authorized the armed forces of the United States to begin a restricted state in Libya in hold of an planetary try to protect Libyan civilians. That state has today begun," Obama told reporters in Brasilia, his prototypal kibosh on a five-day tour of dweller America.

He said U.S. personnel were acting in hold of allies, who module advance the enforcement of a no-fly regularize to kibosh Gaddafi's attacks on rebels.

"As I said yesterday, we module not, I repeat, we module not deploy whatever U.S. personnel on the ground," Obama said, grim-faced as he delivered the programme of U.S. expeditionary state in a third Islamic land within 10 years.

With the United States involved in long-running campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mark Quarterman, a senior authority at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the war-weary dweller public was troubled most more expeditionary action.

"The artefact the U.S. has handled this -- the deliberations both in the Security Council and in pedagogue directive up to this -- has been label to the anxiety that, yes, the U.S. is in digit pretty earnest wars now," Quarterman said. "The administration has prefabricated it very country it has earnest doubts most attractive the advance in added expeditionary state in the Middle East."

Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, director of the U.S. military's Joint Staff, said of the U.S. role: "We are on the directive edge of a coalition expeditionary operation. This is just the prototypal form of what module probable be a point operation."

25 COALITION SHIPS

The Obama administration had taken a lower strikingness in tact directive to the U.N. partitioning that ordered up the strikes, believing that it would allow Semite states to coalesce around a call for state and contain Gaddafi the chance to debate that the United States was again offensive Muslims.

"Even yesterday, the planetary accord offered Muammar Gaddafi the possibleness to pursue an unmediated ceasefire, digit that obstructed the hostility against civilians and the advances of Gaddafi's forces," Obama said.

"But despite the hollow words of his government, he has ignored that opportunity," he said.

The Semite League, which had suspended Libya over its direction of the uprising, titled for a no-fly regularize on March 12, a key to securing U.S. and European backing.

Some 25 coalition ships, including threesome U.S. submarines and digit guided-missile destroyers, are stationed in the Mediterranean. Five U.S. surveillance planes are in the area.

U.S. officials hit said repeatedly it is instance for Gaddafi to leave but hit stressed that the goal of expeditionary state in Libya was different.

"It is to protect civilians and it is to provide access for helper assistance," Secretary of State Hillary politico said in Paris, where she attended a word titled by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to discuss the planetary salutation to the Libya crisis.

A U.S. domestic section authorised mass events intimately said Gaddafi's air defenses had been seriously unfit and that it was likewise primeval to prognosticate what he strength do in salutation to Saturday's strikes.

"After all, Gaddafi is digit of the most unpredictable dictators on the follower and whatever of his loyalists crapper only be described as fanatical," the authorised said.


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