Malta at London conference on Libya offers to host critically injured civilians
UPDATED | Malta’s foreign minister Tonio Borg has participated in the London Conference on Libya, stressing Malta's intention to host and offer medical assistance to injured civilians from the Libyan conflict.
The meeting marks an important development in Malta’s approach to the Libyan crisis, and an attempt to edge closer to opening a dialogue with the council. However, a meeting with the Transitional Council envoy Mahmoud Jalil did not happen.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who invited Malta to the conference, said he hoped the meeting of about 40 delegations would ensure "maximum political and diplomatic unity".
In a statement, the UK and France urged supporters of Muammar Gaddafi to "leave him before it is too late".
The countries' leaders said his regime had completely lost its legitimacy.
Today’s conference will bring together all members of the coalition in the military operation, as well as the UN, Nato, the African Union and Arab League.
It is hoped the presence of Arab countries Qatar, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates will help to strengthen the alliance behind military action.
But Russia, which says the action has gone beyond the terms of the UN resolution that authorised it, said it would not attend.
The conference will also examine the provision of humanitarian aid.
In a joint statement UK Prime Minister Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the conference would "bring the international community together to support Libya's transition from violent dictatorship and to help create the conditions where the people of Libya can choose their own future".
Addressing the people of Libya, the statement said the Gaddafi regime had completely lost its legitimacy and Libya's leader must "go immediately".
"We call on all his followers to leave him before it is too late. We call on all Libyans who believe that Gaddafi is leading Libya into a disaster to take the initiative now to organise a transition process," it said.
Sarkozy and Cameron held a conference call with US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday to discuss a Franco-British proposal to help pave the way for a political transition, the French presidency said.




