Libya: Sarkozy and Cameron visit Tripoli – live updates

• Cameron and Sarkozy visit Tripoli for talks with NTC • Britain’s Syria ambassador attends vigil for killed activist • Last ditch talks over Palestinian statehood bid 10.52am: Cameron and Sarkozy have arrived at the Corinthia hotel in Tripoli. Live footage from the hotel also showed Libya’s interim prime minister Mahmoud Jibril. Cameron and Sarkozy, are due to hold talks with Jibril and Mustafa Abdul Jalil the chairman of the National Transitional Council. 10.47am: In Egypt students at the American University in Cairo – the breeding ground for the country’s future leaders – have joined the protest movement in strikes and sit-ins , writes Jack Shenker. 10.42am: Cameron is due to outline plans to send a military experts to Libya , according to the BBC. It has these bullet points on what Cameron is due to announce in a speech during his visit. • deploy a UK military team to advise the NTC on security • return Libyan assets totalling £500m ($790m) to the interim authorities as soon as possible • make 50 places available in UK specialist hospitals for critically ill Libyans • provide £600,000 for de-mining efforts in Libya and £60,000 to pay for a police communications system 10.30am: Sarkozy fever has hit Benghazi according to Mary Fitzgerald of the Irish Times : Sarkozy fever here in eastern Libya. Talk of streets, schools, cafes, stadiums + even children being named after him No talk yet of babies being named after Cameron. Nevertheless the PM said he was “delighted” to be in Tripoli, according to the BBC. 10.28am: Around 160 French riot police were sent to Libya ahead of Sarkozy’s arrival to secure his visit, writes Angelique Chrisafis in Paris. They will not be uniformed and were reportedly instructed to wear jeans and trainers. For the Elysée, timing and image is everything. Nicolas Sarkozy wanted to get to Libya as soon as possible to cement his media image as “Sarkozy the Libyan” after what has been dubbed “Sarkozy’s war”. It will help his personal rebranding exercise as a more presidential, global statesman before a difficult bid for re-election next year. He was keen to arrive before Turkey’s Erdogan, who he has a complicated relationship with. The visit will also neatly overshadow the Socialists’ live TV debate tonight, their first face-off in the primary race to chose a candidate to against Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential election. Timing is also important for the foreign minister, Alain Juppé, who was supposed to be giving evidence to the Jacques Chirac corruption trial. T he French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who had promoted himself as a kind of replacement foreign minister at the start of the Libya campaign saying he influenced Sarkozy’s stance, was said to have travelled separately. It will be interesting to see how he interacts with Juppé. Things could be frosty. 10.24am: Any satisfaction that David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy will draw from today’s visit may be tempered with anxiety about when exactly this war will finish, writes Chris Stephen in Misrata. It is nearly four weeks since rebel forces entered Tripoli, yet pro-Gaddafi forces are still holding out in the coastal stronghold of Sirte and in the towns of Bani Walid and Sabha. On 27 September, Nato’s mandate, already extended by three months in June, is due to run out. A further three months’ extension can be agreed by the alliance, but Cameron is likely to want to bring down the curtain on what has proved a controversial mission without wanting to seek a further extension. That may be one reason why Nato jets continue to pound Sirte each day: no city, apart from Tripoli, has endured such punishment from Nato strike planes in this war. Since 24 August, when attention was switched from the Libyan capital, Nato has destroyed 296 military targets in and around Sirte; Yesterday’s strikes included a command post, a multiple-barrelled rocket launcher and four radar sites. The problem for Nato, and for rebel forces outside the city, is that Sirte, built near the site of the ancient Phoenician city of Macomedes-Euphranta, is Gaddafi’s birthplace, home of the Gaddafi tribe, and has a lot of kit; much of it around the sprawling Ghardabiya air base just south of the city. On 20 March, the second day of the air war, and seven days before Nato agreed on taking command of the operation, 42 hardened aircraft shelters were destroyed by American B2 stealth bombers. A Sirte rebel who escaped the town on Monday to join opposition forces ringing the city said that any attacking force must cope also with the hostility of the Gaddafi tribe, and its tribal militia who patrol the streets of the town. Adding to the problems rebel forces face is that the city centre is home to merchants originally from Misrata, who are now penned in, effectively as human shields, by Gaddafi militias who have cut power and food supplies going in. 10.13am: “In my three weeks here, people have often come up to me unprompted and said: ‘Thank you, Cameron, thank you, Sarkozy, thank you, Obama,” David Smith reports from Tripoli . In a telephone call on crackly line David said: There is still a lot of goodwill towards the Nato allies. In Tripoli there will be an extremely warm reception [for David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy]. [But] a guarding against any sense of “mission accomplished”. Of course fighting goes on in some Gaddafi strongholds. [But] This will be something of a victory lap. The arrival of these senior figures will be seen as yet another step towards normality. The two leaders are expected to give a press conference and visit a field hospital in Tripoli before travelling to Benghazi, David said. There is a security lockdown at the Tripoli Corinthia hotel where a press conference is expected, he said. There are no chances being taken with security, there are airport style metal detectors, the hotel is in lockdown, many surrounding rounds have been closed. They are clearly conscious of the security risk … It is an important measure of the apparent return to normality in Tripoli that this visit is happening at all. When you drive through Tripoli there are fewer and fewer military checkpoints every day. There is more and more traffic and more and more shops open. You can walk very late at night and feel safer than you would in many parts of London or New York. There hasn’t been any sign of an insurgency. 9.37am: The French finance minister denied that the visit of Sarkozy and Cameron was about picking up the economic spoils of war. AP has this: Francois Baroin, speaking on France-Info radio, said the visit “is a strong gesture, it is a historic moment to go today to Libya.” Asked whether there were economic arguments for the visit, Baroin says, “we are not at that stage.” He says France’s focus is not yet on reconstruction contracts but on supporting the interim leadership and pursuing “the last pro-Gaddafi pockets.” 9.27am: We can stop being coy about the visit of Cameron and Sarkozy to Tripoli. Downing Street has confirmed that the plane has landed. Cameron is being accompanied by foreign secretary William Hague. Our political editor Patrick Wintour has this report on the visit : David Cameron landed in liberated Tripoli this morning to undertake a high-risk visit to the Libyan capital along with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, the other main western champion of the five-month Nato bombing campaign that eventually ousted Colonel Gaddafi from power. William Hague, the foreign secretary, is also on the visit, along with the french intellectual Bernard-Henry Lévy, who persuaded Sarkozy that a victory for the Libyan rebels was essential if the momentum of the Arab Spring was to be retained. Cameron is bringing with him an aid package and will hold talks with the leaders of the National Transitional Council (NTC) on the progress they are making on stabilisation, driving out the remaining pockets of Gaddafi-supporting resistance in the south of the country and preparing for a democratic future. It will be the first visit to Libya by western leaders since the collapse of Gaddafi’s regime, and is likely to spark big scenes of celebration for the two men who championed the Libyan revolution, at some political and diplomatic risk. It is also expected that Cameron wll fly to Benghazi, the cradle of the resistance and still the base for the NTC. The trip has been under discussion for over a fortnight, but the two leaders have been advised that the security situation is safe enough for them to travel to a city that only three weeks ago appeared to be under the iron grip of Gaddafi. 9.15am: Until now US assistant secretary of state Jeffrey Feltman has been the highest ranking western official to visit Libya. After his trip on Wednesday Feltman confirmed that US was monitoring the influence of Islamic groups in Libya. Speaking to the New York Times he said: I think it’s something that everybody is watching. First of all the Libyan people themselves are talking about this. Based on our discussions with Libyans so far, we aren’t concerned that one group is going to be able to dominate the aftermath of what has been a shared struggle by the Libyan people. 9.03am: Reuters has more on Cameron and Sarkozy’s trip to Libya, which it describes as their “victory lap” . Both leaders are hugely popular on the streets of Libya, where “Merci Sarkozy” and “Thank you Britain” are common graffiti slogans. Both may hope to earn political dividends back home from what now appears to have been a successful bet. But on the eve of their visit, the leader of Libya’s National Transitional Council said heavy battles lie ahead against Gaddafi loyalists who have refused to surrender. National Transitional Council vice chairman Abdel Hafiz Ghogo told Reuters the two leaders would visit both Tripoli and Benghazi, where the NTC rulers are still based even though Gaddafi opponents seized the capital more than three weeks ago. Reuters also reports that Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected in Libya on Friday with Egypt’s foreign minister, Mohammed Kamel Amr. 8.27am: Welcome to Middle East Live. Rumours that David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy planned to visit Libya first starting circulating yesterday . Downing Street is refusing to confirm the trip, but it is being reported by al-Jazeera and other media organisations that both men are expected in Tripoli and Benghazi . Last night officials in the new Libyan government indicated that both men would become the first world leaders to visit post-Gaddafi Libya . The French president is said to be revelling in his new nickname “Sarkozy the Libyan” and will be hoping that trip will revive his flagging poll ratings and France’s tarnished image in the Arab world. Writing earlier this month, our Paris correspondent, Angelique Chrisafis , said: Sarkozy wants to take credit for helping to establish a workable post-Gaddafi country, he wants France to succeed where the US failed in Iraq. By showing he could win over others as part of an alliance of world partners on Libya, Sarkozy hopes he can redress his public image as impulsive, undiplomatic and with a tendency for going out on a limb. Here are the other key developments in the region: Libya Mass graves are being discovered every week in Libya, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. It is sending forensic experts to ensure that exhumations are properly conducted to ensure that information about the dead is not lost. In the latest discovery 34 bodies were exhumed from a mass grave near al-Qawalish , in the Nafusa mountains in western Libya, according to Human Rights Watch. Syria • Britain’s ambassador to Syria, Simon Collis, said he attended the vigil of an activist killed under torture to help draw attention to the violent crackdown against protests in Syria. Collis was filmed alongside several other ambassadors at a vigil for Giyath Matar on Sunday. He said: It is important to show Giyath’s family and Syrians that the world has noticed what is going on and to increase awareness of the wider situation in Syria. I spoke to his father: the family are very keen that what happened is known. The broader message to the regime is that this killing and torture must end. Giyath was so clearly associated with peaceful protests and for somebody like that to die in custody is outrageous. British diplomats said that if Collis had been in the country at the time he would have joined the US and French ambassadors on their celebrated trips to Hama in July , which drew attention to the threat of a bloodbath in the opposition stronghold. • Three rescuers and a patient were injured in an attack on a Red Crescent ambulance, Human Rights Watch has documented, in an incident it says highlights the need for independent investigation into human rights violations in Syria. “If Red Crescent volunteers are not safe from harm, who is?” asks Sarah Leah Whitson, its Middle East director. Israel and Palestinian territories The United States, Europe and the Middle East quartet are engaged in a last-ditch effort to set up a fresh round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in an attempt to head off a major diplomatic embarrassment over the looming Palestinian request for recognition of statehood at the UN. The US is leading diplomatic pressure on Israeli and Palestinian leaders in a bid to persuade the parties back to negotiations rather than risk a damaging collision in New York next week. Libya Muammar Gaddafi David Cameron Nicolas Sarkozy Arab and Middle East unrest Syria Palestinian territories Israel Nato Middle East US foreign policy Bashar Al-Assad Matthew Weaver Paul Owen guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 15, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.