EU leaders have urged the world community to tighten the noose on Muammar Gaddafi by ensuring Libya's oil and gas revenues "do not reach" his regime.
In a statement issued at a European Union summit, leaders of the 27-nation bloc said they stood "ready to initiate and adopt further sanctions, including measures to ensure that oil and gas revenues do not reach the Gaddafi regime".
"Member states will take similar proposals to the United Nations Security Council," the statement added
. Tightening sanctions on oil and gas was necessary "to ensure Gaddafi does not pay his mercenaries with oil resources," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The move to strangle funding for Gaddafi followed new sanctions on the Libyan oil sector announced earlier this week and a bid to ban aircraft in European airspace suspected of carrying Libyan-paid mercenaries.
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Germany, which refused to vote for UN Resolution 1793, had called for a "total" oil embargo on Gaddafi's regime after criticism at home against Merkel's refusal to sign up to the international military coalition.
France however was wary that such sanctions could hit Libyan insurgents based in oil-rich eastern regions of the vast desert nation.
Germany moreover, unlike partners such as Italy, has no economic interests at stake in Libya.
France meanwhile pressed for the EU to add political weight to anti-Gaddafi insurgents in the interim transition council by recognising them as "legitimate" rather than merely "political" interlocutors - the status decided at an EU summit earlier this month.
France extended such recognition to Libya's opposition national council earlier this month after Sarkozy met its envoys in Paris.
But the statement issued at the close of the first day of a two-day summit merely offered to "help foster dialogue" to assist a "Libyan-led transition to democracy", including with the insurgents' National Transition Council.
The statement reiterated EU calls on Gaddafi to relinquish power immediately and said the international coalition campaign launched six days ago after UN Resolution 1973 had "significantly contributed to protect civilians".
"When the civilian populations are safe and secure from the threat of attack and the objectives of UNSCR 1793 are met, military operations will come to an end", it added.
