Turkey Consents to Let NATO Run Anti-Gaddafi Libya Operation

US military aircrafts are seen on the tarmac of a NATO base in Souda, Chania, Crete island on 22 March 2011 as await deployment to help inforce the UN-mandated no fly zone over Libya. EPA/BGNES

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davotoglu has announced that NATO will be handed over the command of Operation Odyssey Dawn after his country blocked such a development for several days.

"Our demands have been met on Libya, the operation will be handed over to NATO," Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was quoted as saying on TRT TV Thursday.

The agreement was made in a telephone conference with his counterparts from the USA, UK, and France. Davutoglu said NATO will be in command of the operation within a day or two.

Operation Odyssey Dawn was started on Saturday, March 19, by leading Western states – the USA, France, and the UK – and their partners – to enforce a UN-mandated no-fly zone over Libya where dictator Muammar Gaddafi is fighting a popular uprising.

Earlier on Thursday, Turkey launched a bitter attack on French president Nicolas Sarkozy's and France's leadership of the military campaign against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, accusing the French of lacking a conscience in their conduct in the Libyan operations.

The cause of the row which build up on earlier tensions between France and Turkey was the incident in which a French warplane fired an air-to-ground missile at a Libyan military plane and destroyed it just after it landed at Misrata air force base.

Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accused France of seeing Libya as a source of "oil, gold mines and underground treasures".

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