Political India: Engaging America

From The Hindu

The United States is “gravely concerned” by “disturbing reports and images coming out of Libya", according to a statement issued over the weekend by State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.

In remarks to media posted on Sunday, Mr. Crowley said the State Department was working to ascertain the facts, but had received multiple credible reports that "hundreds" of people had been killed and injured in the recent period of unrest in Libya.

While admitting that the full extent of the death toll was as yet unknown due to the lack of access of international media and human rights organisations, U.S. diplomats had raised to a number of Libyan officials, including Libyan Foreign Minister Musa Kusa, “our strong objections to the use of lethal force against peaceful demonstrators", according to an official.

The comments regarding developments in Libya follow growing concern in the U.S. surrounding protests across the Middle East, beginning in Tunisia and Egypt and more recently spreading to Bahrain and Libya.

Both President Barack Obama and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon had respectively reiterated their condemnation of the "violence used against peaceful protesters", to the King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa and Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa of Bahrain.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Donilon were said to have “strongly urged the government of Bahrain to show restraint, and to hold those responsible for the violence accountable.”

Similarly, in an interview this weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. had been “very clear from the beginning that we do not want to see any violence", describing the action against protestors in Bahrain as deplorable and "absolutely unacceptable".

While pressing Bahrain to return, as quickly as possible, to the reform that it had started, Ms. Clinton also cautioned that the U.S. was keen to see the human rights of the people protected, including right to assemble and the right to freedom of expression.