“I said yesterday that victory was not complete,” insisted Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who on Monday had written — in a blog post entitled “End of a dictatorship” — “The goal is being achieved.”
Defence Minister Gerard Longuet, who on Monday had declared “The regime has fallen, the turnaround is total”, said on France Inter radio: “In Libya the situation is not totally at an end, far from it.”
Both officials confirmed that there were still pockets of resistance by pro-Qaddafi fighters and that combat was continuing, holding out the possibility of more NATO air strikes to help the rebels.
Juppe told Europe 1 radio that officials from France, Britain, Turkey, Germany, the United States and several Arab countries had held a conference call on Monday to discuss their ongoing military mission.
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