London, February 23: Britain has deployed a warship, the HMS Cumberland off the Libyan coast in readiness for a possible sea-borne evacuation of British citizens stuck in the north African country.
William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said on Tuesday that his country was also seeking to send a charter flight to Libya but the aircraft had yet to receive the necessary permission to land.
“We are working closely with airlines to assist as many British nationals as possible to depart Libya … We are making arrangements for a charter plane to travel to Libya in the next 48 hours,” Hague said.
“We are urgently seeking landing clearances and permissions from the Libyan government and in support of this we will send a rapid deployment team of foreign office officials to assist British nationals.”
Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, said on Tuesday that he would not step down despite a nationwide revolt against his rule in which 300 people are reported to have been killed.
British Airways said it had cancelled its daily return flight from Britain to the Libyan capital,Tripoli, for Tuesday and Wednesday and bmi, a subsidiary of Germany’s Lufthansa, said it had cancelled its return flight on Tuesday.
Hague said British nationals seeking to leave Libya had encountered significant difficulties this week.
“Many are currently in Tripoli airport without immediate flights out of the country,” he said, following flight cancellations and closures of airspace.
Hague said the situation in Libya was worsening and there were “many indications of the structure of the state collapsing in many ways in Libya”.
“The resignation of so many ambassadors and diplomats, reports of ministers changing sides within Libya itself, shows the system is in a very serious crisis,” he said.
Agencies…