Daily View: Why did Sarkozy and Cameron visit Libya?
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Commentators ask why David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy visited Libya yesterday.
that David Cameron is "sorely mistaken" if he is visiting Libya to mark the end of conflict:
"For a start, he seems to have overlooked the fact that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the primary target of the military campaign, is still at large and continues to broadcast disobliging messages to the effect that his supporters will continue the fight against the newly-installed government of the National Transitional Council. With Nato still continuing combat missions against pro-Gaddafi forces, the military campaign still has some way to go before Mr Cameron can declare 'mission accomplished'."
the view that the visit was premature triumphalism and he suggests a motive:
"Be under no illusion. This was not about the Libyan succession. The visit, masterminded by spin doctors, was about burnishing Mr Cameron's credentials as an international statesman.
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"His advisers hope it will transform him into a warrior king who, like Margaret Thatcher in her day, defied the Americans to oust a despotic dictator. But Libya is not the Falklands."
However, the effect on voters:
"It is conventional wisdom that David Cameron won't get much of an electoral bounce from the Libya intervention, despite emerging as a bold and competent interventionist. People, the argument goes, are tired of warfare. A senior figure in Tony Blair's No 10 told me yesterday that he did not think the PM would earn a lot of kudos, because with all the problems at home there is less tolerance for overseas adventurism."
The about the reasons for the French and British leaders' visit:
"Symbolism aside, Cameron and Sarkozy's visit served several useful purposes. One was to give a practical boost to the still shaky National Transitional Council (NTC), the unelected and not universally popular would-be successor to Muammar Gaddafi. This is vital as long as Gaddafi and his sons and clansmen are on the loose, regime loyalists in key cities maintain their defiance, and doubts persist about whether the cobbled-together NTC alliance of armed factions and regional tribal groups will hold up."
But he ends with "though they don't say so, they still have those lovely oil contracts to look forward to".
Finally, the of the trip:
"Stressing that the hardest part of political transformation was yet to come, they betrayed no hint of triumphalism. This was a prudent message. It contrasted, surely deliberately, with the hubristic 'Mission Accomplished' rhetoric of President Bush after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. But a provisional judgment ought to be made on the choice to intervene."
