Barack Obama attacks Cameron, Sarkozy over Libya action

In a rare public rebuke of two of Washington’s closest allies, President Barack Obama has hit out at British Prime Minister David Cameron and former French leader Nicolas Sarkozy over their roles in Libya after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.

Mr Cameron became “di-stracted” and Mr Sarkozy wanted to promote his country during the 2011 Nato-led military intervention in Libya, Mr Obama said in an interview with The Atlantic magazine published on Thursday.

British daily The Independent on Friday slammed Mr Obama’s comments as “an unprecedented attack on a British leader by a serving US President,” while The Times called the criticism “extraordinary.”

Mr Obama said when he considered what went wrong in Libya, “there’s room for criticism because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up.”

Mr Cameron stopped paying attention soon after the military operation, he said, becoming “distracted by a range of other things.” Despite the criticism, a US national security council spokesman insisted that Mr Cameron remained a “close partner” of Mr Obama’s.

“Prime Minister Cameron has been as close a partner as the President has had, and we deeply value the UK’s contributions on our shared national security and foreign policy objectives which reflect our special and essential relationship,” Edward Price said. “With respect to Libya, the president has long said that all of us — including the US— could have done more in the aftermath of the Libyan intervention.”

US ambassador to Britain Barzun also tweeted that relations between the two countries remai-ned “special,” a term that Britain has been desperate to re-emphasise since Winston Churchill coined it 70 years ago. “Our relationship is essential. It is special. True yesterday, true today and will be true tomorrow,” he wrote.

A spokesman for Mr Cameron said: “We agree that there are still many difficult challenges in Libya. But as the Prime Minister has said many times before, coming to the aid of innocent civilians who were being tortured and killed by their leader was the right thing to do.” The spokesman said Britain supported peace efforts in Libya.

Mr Obama was also critical of France, saying Mr Sarkozy during the bombing campaign wanted to “trumpet the flights he was taking in the air campaign, despite the fact that we had wiped out all the air defences and essentially set up the entire infrastructure” for the operation.

Meanwhile, UN experts told the Security Council on Wednesday that ISIS has significantly expanded its control over Libya, fuelling demand by the country’s warring parties for more arms to confront the threat.

ISIS has successfully recruited young men from local tribes, offering them protection and benefits but it has also enlisted military officers from the former regime of Gaddafi, said the report by the panel of experts.