The U.N. Security Council unanimously imposed travel and asset sanctions on Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, and his close aides.
The move is expected to ratch up pressure on Gaddafi to quit before any more blood is shed in a popular revolt against his rule.
From in.news.yahoo.com:
The 15-nation council passed the resolution hours after Gaddafi’s police abandoned parts of the capital Tripoli to the revolt that has swept Libya and the United States bluntly told him he must go.
In the oil-rich east around the second city of Benghazi, freed a week ago by a disparate coalition of people power and defecting military units, a former minister of Gaddafi announced the formation of an “interim government” to reunite the country.
To the west in Tripoli, the 68-year-old Brother Leader’s redoubt was shrinking. Reuters correspondents found residents in some neighbourhoods of the capital barricading their streets and proclaiming open defiance after security forces melted away.
Western leaders, their rhetoric emboldened by evacuations that have sharply reduced the number of their citizens stranded in the oilfields and cities of the sprawling desert state, spoke out more clearly to say Gaddafi’s 41-year rule must now end.
An aide to U.S. President Barack Obama said of phone talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel over Libya, “When a leader’s only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now.”
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