Hillary: Libyans Now 'Safer'

Politico reports:

The Obama administration’s top voices on foreign affairs on Wednesday defended the decision to join the international effort to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya while also stressing that United States’s role in leading the military operation would be handed over to allies very soon.

“Many, many Libyans are safer today because the international community took action,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters in Washington. And that, she said, was the mission for which the U.N. Security Council authorized intervention.

Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi can no longer govern or “meet the legitimate aspirations of his own people,” she said, those around him to “make the right decision” about whether to continue to back him and “prepare for a transition that does not include” him.

Speaking in Cairo on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that U.S. forces are preparing to relinquish their leading role in maintaining a no-fly zone over Libya, perhaps as soon as Saturday, though efforts and timing are still fluid. “I think that there is no current timeline in terms of when it might end,” he said of the attacks against Qadhafi’s regime.

“But I think no one was under any illusions that this would be an operation that would last one week, or two weeks, or three weeks,” he said. Nonetheless, he said the U.S. military is preparing to back out of its lead role, echoing administration statements that leadership responsibility for Libya operations would be transitioned to coalition allies in a matter of days and not weeks.

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