by Tim Shipman , James Chapman and Ian Drury
Source: Daily Mail, UK
Mission muddle: General Richards and Defence Secretary Liam Fox arrive for a cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street yesterday amid a public disagreement over targeting Gadaffi
Chief of Defence Staff rejects ministers' suggestions Libyan leader was assassination target
Downing Street claims that killing Gaddafi would preserve lives of Libyan civilians
U.S. warns that taking leader dead would be 'unwise' and risked undermining cohesion
Tomahawk strike from submarine HMS Triumph reduces dictator's Tripoli compound to rubble
(March 22, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Britain's top general was embroiled in an extraordinary clash with Downing Street last night over the legality of a strike to kill Colonel Gaddafi.
No 10 slapped down Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir David Richards after he flatly rejected ministers’ suggestions that the Libyan dictator was a legitimate target for assassination.
The public spat just days into the operation highlighted growing tensions about ‘mission creep’ in the assault on Gaddafi.
Last night, as RAF Typhoon jets roared into action for the first time, David Cameron and Barack Obama insisted again that the dictator must go – but that the aim of the assault was to protect civilians.
Number 10 sources insisted General Richards was ‘simply wrong’ to publicly suggest a UN resolution would not allow Gaddafi to be targeted directly if he was harming his own people.
The spat came as David Cameron battled to keep the support of the Arab League for the mission and ensure Turkey remained onside.
The Prime Minister also called for Libyan commanders still loyal to Gaddafi to ‘put down your weapons and walk away from your tanks’.
Details also emerged of Britain’s Tomahawk cruise missile attack on Gaddafi’s presidential compound in Tripoli, destroying a military command and control centre, while Up to 800 Royal Marines were placed on standby to move to the Mediterranean.
There were also disputed claims that Gaddafi’s sixth son Khamis was killed when a Libyan pilot deliberately crashed his jet into a barracks on Saturday.
Meanwhle, Britain abandoned a further raid by Tornado bombers when SAS soldiers on the ground warned that civilians and journalists were being used as human shields.
And Russian premier Vladimir Putin provocatively likened the UN-backed mission to the medieval crusades.
However, it was General Richards who caused consternation in Whitehall when he appeared before TV cameras yesterday to insist Gaddafi was not a target.
‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘It is not allowed under the UN resolution and it is not something I want to discuss any further.’
Downing Street and Foreign Office officials were quick to dispute that – saying assassinating Gaddafi would be legal because it would preserve civilian lives in Libya.
Foreign Secretary William Hague had refused to rule out targeting Gaddafi, echoing comments made by Defence Secretary Liam Fox on Sunday.
The Government also came under fire from U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who described the calls for Gaddafi’s killing ‘unwise’.
He warned that it could undermine the cohesion of the international coalition supporting the no-fly zone.
‘If we start adding additional objectives then I think we create a problem in that respect,’ he said. ‘I also think it is unwise to set as specific goals things that you may or may not be able to achieve.’
One senior government source said: ‘There has not been some major falling out, but General Richards did say the wrong thing.
‘He is right that regime change would be illegal, but there are obviously circumstances where it would be legal to target Gaddafi if his actions are harming civilians.
‘It would be so if, for example, we were taking out a compound because we knew he was inside and directing a campaign against his people.’
The Tomahawk missile strike on Gaddafi’s compound was carried out by the submarine HMS Triumph.
British special forces operating deep behind enemy lines identified the three-storey building in Tripoli as a crucial target.
And soon afterwards, it was reduced to rubble by a precision strike from the 1,000lb weapons. The block was about 150 yards from the tents which the Libyan leader uses as his official residence.
It is not known where the dictator was at the time of the bombing but he has not been seen or heard since the attack. He may have fled into the desert. Senior government sources described the hugely symbolic strike at the heart of his regime as a ‘shot across his bows’.
The target was agreed around four days ago by British military personnel in concert with the U.S. and the French. It was not the result of specific ‘actionable intelligence’ that Gaddafi was present.
In a six-hour Commons debate on the crisis, Mr Cameron said he would not get into the issue of which targets in Libya were or were not legitimate.
But he issued a dramatic appeal to Gaddafi’s forces to defect to the opposition. ‘Put down your weapons, walk away from your tanks, stop obeying orders from this regime,’ he urged.
General Richards’ opposition to targeting Gaddafi risks a repeat of the standoff between Gordon Brown’s government and former Army chief Lord Dannatt.
General Richards put himself at odds with Dr Fox, who twice at the weekend said Colonel Gaddafi was a ‘legitimate target’ and that it would be a ‘possibility’ to launch a strike to take him out with bunker buster bombs.
Dr Fox was backed up by Mr Hague, who yesterday refused to rule out targeting Gaddafi. ‘It all depends on how people behave,’ he said.
Downing Street and the Foreign Office both reacted with irritation to General Richards’ comments.
A Foreign Office official added: ‘The Government’s position is what the Prime Minister said, not what the Chief of the Defence staff said'
James Arbuthnot, Tory chairman of the Commons Defence Committee, said Mr Cameron had told him that the aim of protecting Libya’s civilians could not be achieved without the removal of Gaddafi.
He said: ‘We won’t be able to protect the civilians in my opinion – and obviously the Prime Minister’s and that of most leaders of the countries in the region – while Gaddafi remains in place.’
But there were also divisions in government. Sources said that Attorney General Dominic Grieve spoke to Dr Fox, encouraging him to tone down his rhetoric.
Labour leader Ed Miliband backed Mr Cameron’s decision to start air strikes but condemned the mixed messages from the Government.
He told MPs: ‘We all know ambiguity about the case for intervention is one of the biggest problems we had in Iraq. We cannot afford mission creep, including in our public pronouncements.’
Shadow defence spokesman Jim Murphy said Dr Fox’s comments were ‘irresponsible in many ways’. In a scathing aside, he added: ‘Fox should be put back in his box’.
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