latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-panetta-20110610,0,5838562.st
ory
latimes.com
Libya rebel council may include extremists, Panetta says
CIA Director Leon Panetta told lawmakers that worries about some members of
the Libyan rebels' ruling body are 'legitimate.'
By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times
June 10, 2011
Reporting from Washington
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President Obama's nominee for secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, told the
Senate that he is concerned that some leaders of Libya's opposition may be
extremists, even as officials disclosed that U.S. aid for those fighting
Moammar Kadafi will fall far short of what the rebel group says it needs.
Panetta, currently the CIA director, told lawmakers during his confirmation
hearing Thursday that worries about some members of the rebels' ruling body,
the Transitional National Council, are "legitimate" and that U.S. officials
are "watching very closely."
Panetta was given a friendly reception in the one-day hearing, and his
confirmation by the full Senate appears assured.
At a foreign ministers meeting in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, of
nations fighting Kadafi's regime, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
said the United States would give $26 million in humanitarian relief for
Libya, bringing total U.S. aid to $81 million.
Other countries, including Italy, France, Australia and Turkey, also made
pledges of aid at the conference totaling $1.1 billion.
But legal hurdles must be cleared before the money can be delivered. And the
total is far less than the $3 billion the rebels have said they need to run
a government and wage war for even a few months.
The rebel council's finance chief, Ali Tarhouni, said outside the meeting
that supportive governments have been promising aid since the armed uprising
erupted in February, but that "it's been almost four months now and nothing
has materialized," the Associated Press reported.
Panetta's concern about the rebel council reflects ambivalence in the Obama
administration. Senior officials have praised the group's motives and goals,
now referring to it as "the legitimate interlocutor for the Libyan people,"
though not a government.
Yet U.S. officials also continued to voice uncertainties about the group's
membership and its ability to govern. They have moved cautiously in
providing money to support it.
Clinton told reporters that the combination of daily airstrikes and stiff
economic sanctions is grinding down Kadafi's regime. She said people close
to Kadafi have had "numerous and continuing discussions" with foreign
diplomats about arranging a transition to a new government, though there is
"not any clear way forward yet."
She said defections had cost Kadafi two foreign ministers, an interior
minister, ambassadors to the United Nations and the United States, an oil
minister, five generals "and, just this week, his labor minister defected as
well."
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