Clinton slams Gaddafi threat to attack Europe

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stepped up Western calls on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to quit, brushing off his threat to attack Europeans in their homes and offices.












"Instead of issuing threats, Gaddafi should put the well-being and the interests of his own people first and he should step down from power and help facilitate a democratic transition," Clinton told .

In an address relayed to some 100,000 supporters in Tripoli's Green Square on Friday, Gaddafi urged NATO to halt its bombing campaign or risk seeing Libyan fighters descend on Europe "like a swarm of locusts or bees."

"Retreat, you have no chance of beating this brave people," Gaddafi said.

"They can attack your homes, your offices and your families, which will become military targets just as you have transformed our offices, headquarters, houses and children into what you regard as legitimate military targets," he said.

NATO announced it had stepped up strikes on Gaddafi forces in west Libya including the capital Tripoli, saying it had carried out more than 50 attacks since Monday.

Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez said the alliance stance was unchanged.

"Spain's and the international coalition's response is to maintain the unity and determination with which we have been working these past months," she said..

Libyan rebels who had advanced to within 80 km (50 miles) of the capital were stopped in their tracks on Friday by a barrage of rocket fire from government forces, underlining the dogged resistance of Gaddafi troops to a five-month revolt.

"(It) was obviously a strategic withdrawal because of the battlefield situation and the amount of bombardment that the revolutionary forces were receiving," said rebel spokesman Ahmed Bani. "But we hope to counter that within the next 48 hours."

In Tripoli, a senior source in Gaddafi's government said there was reliable intelligence indicating the rebels were planning to attack oil export terminals in the eastern towns of Brega and Ras Lanuf.

"The Libyan government will do whatever (possible) to prevent such attacks," the source, who did not want to be identified.

"It urges international oil companies as well as international insurance companies to put pressure on their governments to force the rebels, who are supported by NATO, to stop their destructive operations,"

HELICOPTER ATTACKS

Coalition military officials refuse to characterize the situation on the ground as a stalemate after a 104-day bombing campaign that has strained alliance firepower and tested unity, with internal divisions over strategy surfacing.

Analysts say part of NATO's strategy is to use the attacks to hinder efforts by authorities to put down any future uprising in Tripoli.

Britain's Defense Ministry said Apache helicopters hit three tanks and a bunker firing position in an attack on an army camp west of Tripoli late on Friday. Libyan state TV said NATO also bombed the central Al-Jufrah region on Saturday.

A document seen by Reuters showed African Union leaders had agreed on Friday that member states would not execute the arrest warrant for Gaddafi, leaving open the possibility that he could go into exile in one of the African Union's 53 nations.

The grouping also offered to host talks on a ceasefire and a transition to democratic government, but did not call on Gaddafi to step down and left open whether he had a future role.

Mansour Sayf al Nasr, the rebels' representative in France, told reporters at the summit in Equatorial Guinea: "We understood that the spirit of the document is that Gaddafi will not have a role to play in the future of Libya."

Abdel-Hafiz Ghoga, vice president of the Benghazi-based rebel council. "We reject the African Union proposal because it includes nothing concerning our demands. We are only demanding one thing: Gaddafi's resignation ... We can gain freedom and democracy only if Gaddafi steps down.

"I think we can obtain freedom only through military operations and we will be able to do this."

In Tripoli, government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim did not comment on whether any AU-hosted negotiations should start on the assumption that Gaddafi would step down, saying only: "We have been saying for months that we will have talks with all parties."

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UN atom chief urges nuclear stress tests, inspections

The UN nuclear chief called on Monday for national safety tests on all the world's reactors within 18 months, followed by international inspections to help prevent any repeat of Japan's atomic crisis three months ago.

Yukiya Amano, opening a ministerial meeting in Vienna on strengthening safety standards after the Fukushima emergency, said UN experts should be allowed to carry out random safety reviews of nuclear power plants.

His proposals -- aimed at ensuring that nuclear plants can withstand extreme events such as the earthquake and tsunami that crippled Fukushima -- may prove controversial for states which want to keep safety an issue strictly for national authorities.

"Public confidence in the safety of nuclear power has been badly shaken," Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy (IAEA), said in a speech to ministers and regulators from the UN body's 151 member states.

"However, nuclear power will remain important for many countries, so it is imperative that the most stringent safety measures are implemented everywhere."

Amano, a veteran Japanese diplomat, said nuclear safety would remain a national responsibility -- and that governments would have the main task of testing, if only in theory, whether reactor systems could withstand various stresses. But he also made clear he wanted the U.N. agency to play a greater role.

"IAEA review of every one of the world's 440 operating nuclear reactors in just a few years is not a realistic proposition. I therefore propose a system based on random selection," he said.

Japan's crisis has prompted a rethink of energy policy around the world, underlined by Germany's decision to shut down all its reactors by 2022 and an Italian vote to ban nuclear power for decades.

At the June 20-24 meeting, IAEA member nations will begin charting a strategy on boosting global nuclear safety, but differences on how much international action is needed may hamper follow-up efforts, diplomats say.

Russia wants to move towards making the UN agency's safety standards compulsory, but many other countries oppose this.

EXTREME NATURAL HAZARDS

Currently there are no mandatory, international nuclear safety regulations, only IAEA recommendations which national regulators are in charge of enforcing.

Russia's atomic energy chief Sergei Kiriyenko welcomed Amano's proposals, telling the conference that "we are delighted that they are very much in keeping" with Moscow's views.

Japanese officials have come under fire for their handling of the emergency and the authorities have admitted that lax standards and poor oversight contributed to the accident.

Three reactors at the Japanese complex went into meltdown when power and cooling functions failed, causing radiation leakage and forcing the evacuation of some 80,000 people.

"In the light of the Fukushima Daiichi accident, thorough and transparent national risk assessments should be made of all nuclear power plants in the world.

"They should focus on safety margins against extreme natural hazards, such as earthquakes, tsunamis and floods. This could be done within 12 to 18 months."

He gave no details of how such assessments would be carried out. Typically experts speak of "stress tests" which provide for theoretical and practical simulations of how power plant systems would respond to various "stress" events, such as earthquakes.

Amano said these national assessments should be followed by IAEA expert reviews to check operational safety emergency preparedness, and the effectiveness of regulatory systems.

"I propose that countries with nuclear power should agree to systematic, periodic peer reviews by the IAEA," he said.

"The agency could conduct an international safety review of one nuclear power plant in 10 throughout the world over, say, a three-year period."

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