Obama treads carefully on Libya, rebuffs pressure

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The White House pushed back  today against pressure from some U.S. lawmakers for direct  intervention in Libya, saying it first wanted to figure out  what various military options could achieve.
“It would be premature to send a bunch of weapons to a post  office box in eastern Libya,” White House spokesman Jay Carney  said. “We need to not get ahead of ourselves in terms of the  options we’re pursuing.”
The Obama administration faces sharp criticism, especially  from Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators, for  its cautious approach to the turmoil in Libya but has signaled  it will not be rushed into hasty decisions that could suck the  U.S. military into a new war and fuel anti-American sentiment.
One major obstacle: U.S. officials are still trying to  identify the main actors within the opposition groups fighting  to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The aims of these groups  are unclear, including what type of government they might set  up if Gaddafi falls, the officials say.
President Barack Obama said today he wanted to “send a  very clear message to the Libyan people that we will stand with  them in the face of unwarranted violence and the continuing  suppression of democratic ideals that we’ve seen there.”
The White House has long said all options are on the table  over Libya but, today for the first time, it gave a vague  priority to the possible military steps being studied.
Bottom of the list is sending in ground troops, Carney told  a briefing. A “no-fly” zone, an idea popular with U.S.  lawmakers, is being “actively” discussed within NATO, while  possibly arming the rebels is also in the mix, he said.
Brian Katulis, a Middle East expert who has informally  advised the White House on the turmoil sweeping the region,  said the Obama administration is constrained by its reluctance  to act militarily without international support.
The calls from lawmakers for more action would create a  “little bit of pressure” on the White House, he said, but not  enough to force a course of action it sees as perilous.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates reiterated today  that any intervention in Libya would require broad backing.
“At this point there is a sense that any action should be  the result of international sanction,” he said during a trip to  Afghanistan.
Underscoring the lack of consensus, Russian Foreign  Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow opposed military  intervention. China, a fellow veto-wielding member of the U.N.  Security Council, has expressed similar misgivings.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said today  the alliance would intervene only if the U.N. Security Council  called for it.
The United States has deployed two amphibious assault ships  off the Libyan coast, ostensibly to help with any humanitarian  emergencies, while dispatching military transport aircraft to  airlift stranded Egyptian refugees from neighboring Tunisia.
Over the weekend, leading Republican and Democratic  senators urged Obama to do more to help Libya’s rebels, who  have fought Gaddafi’s security forces to a standstill in some  areas but are facing repeated air strikes.
Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, said one  option was “simply aiding and arming the insurgents,” noting  that the United States often did this during the Cold War.
John Kerry, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign  Relations Committee who is close to Obama, repeated his call  for a no-fly zone and floated another idea — bombing Libyan  runways to ground Gaddafi’s warplanes.