As EU leaders are set to discuss the situation in Libya on Friday in Brussels, Britain and Germany have urged the EU to issue a joint declaration stating that member countries will not cooperate with disgraced Libyan leader Moammar Kaddafi and urging him to step down.
Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe on Thursday said Paris and Berlin were calling on their European Union partners to engage in dialogue with Libyan opposition leaders. "We are on the same track to say Colonel Kadhafi is discredited, he must go, we must engage dialogue with the new Libyan representatives,” Juppe said.
In a joint letter to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, British Foreign Secretary William Hague and his German counterpart, Guido Westerwelle, said the upheaval in the EU's 'southern neighborhood' presented Europe with a “challenge and opportunity” on a scale matching the revolutions of 1989.
The letter said the EU summit should agree upon a declaration that “the EU and its member states will not work or cooperate with Kaddafi and that he has to step aside to allow for a true democratic transformation of the country.”
EU Foreign Ministers meet in Brussels on Thursday ahead of Friday’s summit for emergency talks on Libya as NATO Defence Ministers are also gathering in the EU capital.
France has become the first country to recognize Libya's opposition national council and said it would send an ambassador to the rebel-held city of Benghazi.
The national council is the only "legitimate representative of the Libyan people," the French presidency said in a statement after meeting in Paris with its envoys.
After her talks with EU Foreign Ministers on the crisis in Libya, Catherine Ashton will join the NATO Defence Ministers to discuss the prospects for implementing a no-fly zone over Libya which would require a UN mandate.
The European Union has already imposed sanctions against the Libyan leadership and are likely to extend them Friday during the extraordinary summit meeting of EU leaders convened by the president of the European Council to discuss the strategic lines of the Union's reaction to developments in Libya and in Northern Africa.
They will discuss a policy paper proposing a new partnership for democracy and shared prosperity with the southern Mediterranean presented by the European External Action Service and the Commission on March 8.