http://my.earthlink.net/article/int?guid=20110320/ca88d4f2-261c-446b-9b50-964781f9ee33
Europe, not US, pushed for military force in Libya
ANGELA CHARLTON
From Associated Press
March 20, 2011 7:27 PM EDT
PARIS (AP) — America unleashed the heavier firepower, but Europe — to the surprise of some — was the driving force behind the assault on Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.
France, perhaps hoping to purge memories of a dictator-coddling past, fired the first strikes Saturday. Britain, still stinging from its release of the Libyan agent behind the Lockerbie plane bombing, cajoled other nations into joining.
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The contrast with 2003 — when France led global opposition to the war on Iraq — shows how much has changed since then, and also how different things can be when the problem is on Europe's doorstep.
Europeans fear a flood of refugees, making them particularly sensitive to the possibility of a humanitarian disaster in North Africa.
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And in a trademark Sarkozy move, he summoned world leaders on less than 24 hours notice to Paris for a summit Saturday to announce the intervention.
"France has decided to assume its role, its role before history," he proclaimed, as French warplanes staged their first sorties.
France broke a half-century tradition when it fired the first airstrike on Libyan tanks Saturday. Francois Heisbourg, of the International Institute of Security Studies, said it was the first time since the Suez expedition in 1956 that "the initiative has come from the French."
France fired "the opening shot of a war, that's the strategic significance. We now know we have crossed the line," he said.
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