Gaddafi forces mine Misrata TRIPOLI: The United States and France are united in their resolve to finish the job in Libya, US President Barack Obama said Friday as NATO reported that Muammar Gaddafi's forces had laid landmines in Misrata. In a dramatic shift, meanwhile, Russia joined the call of Western powers for Gaddafi to step down but the outgoing head of the Arab League Amr Moussa said he doubted the embattled leader would leave voluntarily. “We are joined in our resolve to finish the job,” Obama said after talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the G8 summit in the French resort of Deauville. But the US leader warned that the “UN mandate of civilian protection cannot be accomplished when Gaddafi remains in Libya directing his forces in acts of aggression against the Libyan people.” G8 leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States called in the draft of their final summit statement for Gaddafi to step down. “Gaddafi and the Libyan government have failed to fulfill their responsibility to protect the Libyan population and have lost all legitimacy. He has no future in a free, democratic Libya. He must go,” the draft summit statement said. Ahead of the summit, Russia — which has criticized the NATO air war on Gaddafi's regime — was seen as reluctant to take a hard line, but it too toughened its stance on Libya during the Deauville meeting. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said: “Yes, we are ready to admit... he needs to go. We believe that Colonel Gaddafi has forfeited legitimacy due to his actions... indeed we need to help him go.” But the Arab League's Moussa said there was a yawning gap between Tripoli and the rebel National Transitional Council on the question of Gaddafi, with the rebels demanding he go immediately and the regime saving his exit for “later.” “Knowing the man, I don't think he's going to step down,” he said. A Western diplomat meanwhile said Gaddafi has become increasingly paranoid about NATO airstrikes and that he “appears to be moving from hospital to hospital, spending each night in a different one”. “He is moving from one place that we won't bomb to another place that we won't bomb,” the diplomat said citing British intelligence reports. NATO accused Gaddafi's forces of laying landmines in Misrata, the main rebel-held city in western Libya. “This morning's reports showed that a minefield was laid in the Misrata area,” Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, the commander of the NATO mission in Libya, told a Brussels news conference. “Anti-personnel landmines, in contravention to international law, had been laid in the Misrata area to prevent the population from moving,” he said. “Mines do not make a difference whether it is a child or an adult.” Two international rights groups, meanwhile, said on Friday Gaddafi's forces are indiscriminately attacking towns in the Nafusa mountains of western Libya, sending residents fleeing, with some being forced to live in caves. New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report released Friday that Gaddafi's forces have been pounding towns in the Nafusa mountains of western Libya, firing Grad rockets, which are “an inherently indiscriminate weapon,” and “forcing people to leave the area and even live in caves.” Meanwhile, the Libyan regime rejected calls from a summit of G8 world powers for Gaddafi to step down and said any initiative to resolve the crisis would have to go through the African Union. “The G8 is an economic summit. We are not concerned by its decisions,” said Libya's Deputy Foreign Minister, Khaled Kaaim. Tripoli also rejects Russian mediation and will “not accept any mediation which marginalises the peace plan of the African Union,” he said. “We are an African country. Any initiative outside the AU framework will be rejected.” Kaaim said it had no confirmation of a change in Russia's position. “We have not been officially informed. We are in the process of contacting the Russian government to verify reports in the press,” the official told a press conference.
