Russian MFA concerns over Libya's peaceful population

04.05.2011 Moscow expressed concerns over disproportional use of force in Libya and growing number of killed non-combatants, reports RIA Novosti citing the newly-appointed human rights commissioner of Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Konstantin Dolgov.

Armed conflict between troops of national leader Muammar Gaddafi and rebels has been taking place in Libya for almost three months now. On March 17 the UN Security Council approved the Resolution 1973 imposing no-fly zone over Libya and allowing foreign military intervention into this North African country. In particular, among participants of the operation started on March 19 are Great Britain, France, the US, Canada, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and Norway.

"Unfortunately, the intensity of missile and bomb strikes upon objects in Tripoli has been recently grown... There is an information that those strikes are delivered not only at military assets but also at civilian infrastructure", commented Dolgov. The MFA human rights commissioner pointed out that "peaceful population dies as a result of combat actions, harmless people suffer; according to some sources, number of non-combatant victims continues to grow... disproportional use of force going beyond mandate of the UN Resolution 1973 leads to the most unwanted consequences, i.e. death among civilian population".

"Moscow takes such developments with concern... Once again we call for strict observance of UN Security Council's resolutions", emphasized Dolgov.

"We proceed from the fact and underline again that the only real possibility to secure civil population and stabilize the situation in general is immediate termination of combat actions, starting of political dialog between Libyan parties in order to settle the crisis by peaceful means", he added.

The commissioner noted that UN Security Council's resolutions "are aimed just at peaceful settlement of the conflict".

Meanwhile "neither Resolution 1970 nor Resolution 1973 provide solution for such political issues as change of regime in Tripoli... once the actions are taken in this direction, they would definitely go beyond the mandate issued by the UN Security Council", he added.