PARIS — France acknowledged Wednesday that it airlifted weapons to Libyan civilians fighting Moammar Gadhafi’s forces in a besieged mountain region south of Tripoli, becoming the first NATO country to do so in a major escalation in the international campaign.
The bold move was likely to draw criticism from countries leery of the allied use of force in Libya’s civil war — such as China and Russia — and crossed a threshold in hopes of a breakthrough in the protracted NATO-led mission.
The deliveries of guns, rocket-propelled grenades and munitions took place in early June in the western Nafusa mountains, when Gadhafi’s troops had encircled civilians, and his government refused a U.N request for a pause in the fighting there to allow access for a humanitarian aid shipment, French military spokesman Col. Thierry Burkhard said.
After informing the United Nations, France dropped humanitarian aid including water, food and medical supplies to besieged civilians in the region, but the situation then deteriorated further, he said.
“So, France also dropped equipment that allowed them to defend themselves — self-defense assets — which is to say weapons and munitions,” Burkhard said.
The weapons were parachuted in by a military transport plane, he said. In New York, France’s U.N. Ambassador, Gerard Araud, told reporters that France had acted under a provision of the Security Council resolution adopted March 17 that imposed a no-fly zone over Libya and authorized military action short of a “foreign occupation force” to protect civilians.
Araud said France believes a provision saying that member states can take “all necessary measures, notwithstanding” an arms embargo, to protect civilians threatened by attack “means for us that in exceptional circumstances” the arms embargo can be ignored to protect civilians.
He said France will officially notify Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of the weapons delivery as required under the resolution.
But in a slightly different reasoning out of Paris, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said France’s “reading” from early on was that the U.N. resolutions barred sending weapons to Gadhafi’s regime — but the rebels were exempt, even if Paris had refrained from arming them for two months. This time, with the civilians surrounded in Nafusa, France felt compelled to arm them to help stave off bloodshed, he said.
“What we feared was a massacre in the Nafusa mountains,” said Valero. He said France’s view was that the delivery of such “small weapons for self-defense” did not run counter to the U.N. mandate.
