BERLIN — As foreign ministers of the NATO alliance met here on Thursday against a backdrop of dispute over their aerial campaign in Libya, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to play down divisions, saying the allies were pursuing the common goal of ending the four-decade government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. The gathering came as diplomats in several capitals wrestled with the conflict in Libya, seeking a formula for political progress in the absence of any decisive military gains. “Military power alone cannot provide the solution to the crisis,” the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told reporters.
Earlier, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization were “sharing the same goal, which is to seek the end of the Qaddafi regime in Libya.” She was speaking after meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, whose government angered many NATO allies by abstaining from the United Nations Security Council vote last month authorizing airstrikes.
NATO’s response to the crisis is seen as a major test for the Europeans to take responsibility for a region close to the Continent’s southern flank. Last week, the United States handed control and command of the Libyan mission to the alliance.
But Pentagon officials disclosed Wednesday that American warplanes had continued to strike targets in Libya even after the Obama administration said the United States was stepping back from offensive missions and letting NATO take the lead.
Only 14 of the alliance’s 28 members are actively participating in the operation, and only 6 are carrying out airstrikes against targets on the ground, said a NATO diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters. France and Britain have complained that other NATO allies are not sharing the burden of ground attacks equally, possibly for fear of causing civilian casualties. Libya’s rebels have also complained that the coalition is not doing enough to silence Colonel Qaddafi’s heavy weapons such as tanks, artillery and missile batteries.
“There is certainly not a shortage of aircraft among NATO nations,” the NATO diplomat said. “We get the impression that while countries are willing to do air sorties, they are not willing to strike for fear of hitting civilians. Qaddafi’s forces often place their armored personnel carriers close to civilian populations.”
NATO ministers also seemed divided on whether to arm the rebels. On Thursday, Foreign Minister Alain Juppé of France said his government would oppose the idea, while Italy has been reported to be in favor of giving weapons to the insurgents. “France is not currently in that frame of mind,” Mr. Juppé told a questioner in the German capital.
The Berlin deliberations were not the only talks under way as international leaders scrambled — sometimes in different directions — to end the crisis.
In Cairo, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, was set to join talks with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, along with officials from the African Union and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The African Union has produced a so-called road map for peace which, it says, Colonel Qaddafi has accepted. But the rebels have rejected it because it would permit the Libyan leader to remain in office.
In yet another round of discussions on Wednesday in the wealthy Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, NATO, Arab and African ministers agreed “to work urgently” with the Libyan rebel leadership to set up a mechanism by which some frozen assets belonging to Colonel Qaddafi and his family might be transferred to the rebel cause.
That gathering also gave a boost to the insurgents’ national council, declaring it, “in contrast with the current regime” to be a “legitimate interlocutor, representing the aspirations of the Libyan people.” Only three countries, France, Italy and Qatar, have fully recognized the rebels bilaterally.
Foreign Secretary William Hague of Britain, the co-chairman of the meeting in Doha, Qatar’s capital, said the gathering was “united in believing that Qaddafi’s continued presence would threaten any resolution of the crisis.”
As the diplomacy unfolds, however, the lack of a clear result on the battlefield has deepened international divisions, with the African Union seeming to tilt toward Colonel Qaddafi while major emergent powers who have long opposed the NATO airstrikes renewing their criticism.
At a meeting in China of the so-called Brics countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — an official said all five leaders “condemned the bombings” in Libya, Reuters quoted an unidentified official as saying. Of the five, only South Africa voted in favor of a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing the airstrikes.
“We share the principle that the use of force should be avoided,” they added while urging a peaceful settlement of the Libyan conflict and praising the mediation efforts of the African Union, Reuters reported.
