NewsBreakingOnline

Prime minister suggests further military actions may lie ahead as Arab League members ‘toughen stance’ against Syria David Cameron has said “armchair generals” who criticised the government’s strategy in Libya had been proved wrong as he hailed Britain’s role in the intervention as “very significant”. The prime minister insisted Britain would remain a “full-spectrum player” in the future, despite defence cuts, and signalled further interventions may lie ahead as he revealed that some members of the Arab League were “toughening their stance” over the situation in Syria. Cameron was speaking after co-chairing a major international summit to build support for the fledgling rebel administration. Libya’s new leaders presented themselves to the Paris summit, promising a swift transition to democracy after six months of Nato-backed revolution and asking for immediate UN support in organising elections. Speaking on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, Cameron said Britain had played “a very important role” in the intervention. “A lot of armchair generals who said ‘you couldn’t do it without an aircraft carrier’ – they were wrong, and a lot of people said that Tripoli was completely different to Benghazi and that the two don’t get on – they were wrong. “People who said ‘this is all going to be an enormous swamp of Islamists and extremists’ – they were wrong. People who said we were going to run out of munitions – they were wrong. I think we should be proud of what our forces did.” Cameron said there were “lots of lessons to learn” from the conflict in Libya, and that the government would “take our time learning them”. Support for the revolution was justified and in the UK’s national interest, he said. There had been “a moral imperative” to intervene to stop a slaughter in Benghazi and the Libyan rebels’ success would allow the Arab spring to continue. “Gaddafi was a monster. He was responsible for appalling crimes, including crimes in this country and I think the world will be much better off without him,” he said. Despite trumpeting Britain’s role, Cameron said there was a danger of people in the west “taking too much credit for themselves” for what was really a Libyan triumph. He said: “This is the Libyan people who have rid themselves of a dictator, and they have suffered appalling loss of life from some very brave actions. This is important, because I think one of the reasons why Tripoli is getting itself back together again in relatively good order is because it wasn’t a foreign force that knocked over Gaddafi’s regime, the Libyans did it themselves. This wasn’t done too them – they did it, and so they are rapidly mending it.” On the lack of intervention in Syria, despite the parallel situation of a dictator doing “dreadful things to his people”, he said Britain had “been in the vanguard in arguing for a tougher approach”, and that President Assad should stand aside. But, he said, the circumstances were different because there wasn’t the same backing either in the Arab League or internationally, though he said there were signs that members of the Arab League were beginning to take a harder stance against Bashar al-Assad’s regime. On Britain’s stance, he said: “We have argued for travel bans, asset freezes and for sanctions and a tough approach to this regime. I had good conversations with some members of the Arab League last night in Paris and they are toughening their stance as they realise that what they are doing is appalling. They realise he [Assad] had his chance to demonstrate he was in favour of reform and he has failed to do that.” On Britain’s defence capabilities in light of an 8% cut in budgets, Cameron insisted Britain had “punched its weight, even above its weight” in the number of sorties over Libya. British forces had “not suffered” from not having an aircraft carrier as a result of decisions made in the strategic defence review, he said, pointing to “basing” abilities in the Mediterranean for Typhoon and Tornado aircraft flying over Libyan skies. The prime minister challenged House of Commons library figures that suggested Britain had performed just 10% of all strike sorties, saying the figure was twice that. “There were somewhere just less than 8,000 sorties,” he insisted. “Britain performed 1,600 of those, so around a fifth of strike sorties. That is punching at our weight or even above our weight. We played a very important role, not just in the number of strike sorties but also in the fact that we were there right from the beginning. “It was Britain and France with America that called time on Gaddafi and said that we were not going to allow a slaughter in Benghazi.” Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Military Defence policy Syria Middle East Africa Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk