Nowhere to run for Colonel Gaddafi
LIBYAN dictator Colonel Gaddafi was left with nowhere to hide last night as potential escape routes from civil war were slamming shut.
Britain and other nations stepped up their efforts to isolate him and his family with a series of measures aimed at keeping the despot in his country with the prospect of facing war crimes charges.
Amid escalating protests in Libya demanding that he relinquish his decades-long grip on power, Foreign Secretary William Hague, who also called on him to quit, announced the UK was revoking the right to diplomatic immunity here for Gaddafi and his family.
Late yesterday, Chancellor George Osborne also confirmed the Government had implemented an immediate freeze on all Gaddafi’s assets in Britain and also of his four sons and a daughter, “and on those acting on their behalf”.
Cash, shares, bonds and property are among the items covered by the action, which follows Saturday’s UN Security Council agreement to freeze his assets, as well as imposing a global travel ban on him and his henchmen and referring the regime’s brutal crackdown on protesters to the International Criminal Court.
Gaddafi and his family are said to have salted away up to £60billion across the globe, including allegedly millions of investments in the UK. Mr Osborne said the Government’s actions sent “a strong message to the Libyan regime that violence against its own people is not acceptable”. In further moves, all export licences for goods and technology that could be used for internal repression have been revoked, and Business Secretary Vince Cable has banned the unlicensed export of any uncirculated Libyan banknotes.
It emerged yesterday the Treasury had delayed the export to Libya of £900million of banknotes ordered from a company in the UK, to ensure it could not head for Tripoli before the export ban could be put in place.
Earlier, Mr Hague called on Gaddafi to quit. “We have here a country descending into civil war, with atrocious scenes of killing of protesters and a government actually making war on its own so it is time for Colonel Gaddafi to go,” he said.
Mr Hague, who will be in Geneva today for meetings with UN counterparts stressed the importance of international cooperation to ensure the uprisings across the Middle East translated into positive change. He said: “If we get this right over the coming months it will the greatest advance in world affairs since central and eastern Europe changed so dramatically 20 years ago.”
Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to face calls from MPs today to explain last week’s delay in Foreign Office operations to get Britons out of Libya.
