“No-fly zone over Libya is disproportionate” – former ambassador to Libya

There are no real grounds for the introduction of a no-fly zone over Libya, former British ambassador to Libya, Oliver Miles, told RT.

”I think it is disproportionate for the moment. Because why do you have a no-fly zone? Because Gaddafi has an air force and the theories that he might use it effectively and that the rebels would have no answer to it and there would be humanitarian disaster,” he said. “That is all possible, but it has not happened yet, but what has happened so far is that the air force has made a rather pathetic showing.” “We have heard reports of bombing, all of the bombs seem to have missed whatever they would have meant to hit,” Miles explained. “There have been stories of attacks right from the beginning of the conflict in Libya, there have been stories on attacks on civilian population, but I do not know of a single authenticated case.” ”We have all probably had the experience, I have done it myself, all the media correspondents are telephoning anyone they can find in Libya and the story you get from everybody is: Right here, where I am, there is shooting and it sounds nasty, but I am not going outside to look,” he said. According to Oliver Miles, the chances that NATO might initiate intervention in Libya are currently very slim. ”As things are at the moment I think it is most unlikely. Particularly, because Turkey, which is an important member of NATO, is dead against intervention,” he said. “I think there will be others as well, probably, but Turkey is already showing its hand, so to speak.””As a matter of fact I do not believe anybody at this moment is really pushing for military intervention,” Oliver Miles added. “There has been a lot of talk of no-fly zone and people are gradually coming to realize that a no-fly zone, which sounds a rather innocent form of intervention, actually involves a lot of military intervention.””The first thing you have to do if you have a no-fly zone is make sure that you eliminated the effective anti-aircraft defenses of Libya,” he said. “Eliminating them would be a big job.”