The future of the Arab Spring remains in the balance, according to William Hague, who has warned “We are going to be working at this for the rest of our lives”.
William Hague said Britain is unfreezing assets worth £91 million belonging to Arabian Gulf Oil Company Photo: Kerim Okten-Pool/Getty Images
By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
7:00AM BST 28 Jul 2011
Mr Hague, the foreign secretary, who on Wednesday expelled the remaining staff of the Libyan embassy as Britain granted political recognition to the country’s opposition, said that the democratic gains made during the six-month series of revolutions risk being for naught thanks to sectarian violence and struggling economies.
“We mustn’t expect each country to be neatly done in six months. It’s not a computer game that comes to an end when you get bored,” he said in an interview with The Times.
He said the future of Egypt would decide the extent to which democracy would flow across the region, calling it “the single most important piece of the jigsaw in the whole Arab Spring”.
Mr Hague spoke amid increasingly frantic diplomatic moves five months into a bombing campaign against the Libyan dictatorship. The foreign secretary said Britain could free up frozen funds for the Libyan opposition.
He said the opposition National Transitional Council (NTC) would be invited to send a diplomatic envoy to take over the Libyan People’s Bureau in Knightsbridge.
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"The Prime Minister and I have decided that the United Kingdom recognises and will deal with the National Transitional Council as the sole governmental authority in Libya," Mr Hague said.
"In line with that decision we summoned the Libyan chargé d’affaires to the Foreign Office today and informed him that he and the other regime diplomats must leave the UK.
"We no longer recognise them as representatives of the Libyan government." The announcement added to concerns that the Government was groping for measures after the failure to oust Col Gaddafi despite five months of Nato attacks.
In Tripoli, Khaled Kaaim, Gaddafi's deputy foreign minister, denounced Britain's move as "irresponsible, illegal and in violation of British and international laws."
Col Bob Stewart, a Conservative MP and former UN commander in Bosnia, said that only political or diplomatic efforts could surmount the military failures of the campaign.
He told the BBC: "It may not be diplomatically or politically a stalemate, but on the ground it looks like what I would term a military stalemate."
The announcement that the current chargé d’affaires was going brought a new twist to the long-running controversy over the mission. As far back as 1980 the embassy was in the headlines after the ambassador publicly threatened two dissidents.
It was closed in 1984 after its officials shot Pc Yvonne Fletcher.
It is believed there are eight staff at the bureau. The chargé d’affaires Khaled Benshaban and the other staff will be given a few days to leave the country.
The Foreign Office took the decision after a meeting of the National Security Council on Libya on Monday.
Mr Hague said Britain was unfreezing assets worth £91 million to the Arabian Gulf Oil Company, which is effectively controlled by the NTC. The funds would help it to provide basic supplies of fuel and wages.
Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, had blocked earlier attempts to fund the opposition with frozen funds on the grounds that Britain continued to maintain diplomatic relations with Libya.
The British embassy in Tripoli was shut after the Nato bombing campaign against the regime was launched in mid-March. After the embassy was vandalised in May, Omar Jelban, the Libyan ambassador to the UK was expelled.
The United States said it was reviewing a request by Libya's rebels to open an embassy in Washington, following Britain's decision.
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