Nuncio, Libya bishop offer views on international talks in London

(March 31, 2011) The Vatican observer at the London conference on Libya said the situation in the North African country is forcing the international community to examine its obligation to intervene when the lives and rights of civilians are being threatened. Meanwhile, another prelate, the bishop in Libya's capital, Tripoli, said it appears to him that people just want the fighting to continue. "They want to continue the war," said Bishop Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli of Tripoli. "Arming part of the Libyan population against another part other doesn't seem to me to be a moral solution," he told Fides, the news agency. Archbishop Antonio Mennini, the Vatican nuncio to Great Britain and observer at the London conference on Tuesday told Vatican Radio that the discussions by three dozen participating countries and international agencies "seemed to raise again the question of the fundamental vocation of the international community to respond to the basic needs of a population that is extremely exhausted." Archbishop Mennini told the radio on Wednesday that he believed participants really were concerned about "safeguarding civilians' human rights and safeguarding human lives." In the piece aired by Vatican Radio, the archbishop did not discuss the military operation launched by the United States, France and Great Britain, and he expressed no judgment about the London conference's call for a "regime change" in Libya, other than to say that Italy and several other countries seemed to be looking for a way to help leader Moammar Gadhafi go into exile.