Thank you for that.
First, of course, these issues come up quite frequently, and the Russians in particular are not shy about raising their concerns. But from our point of view, we were strictly within the mandate we were given. As you know, the mandate had three parts to it: one was the arms embargo, one was a no-fly zone, and the third part was protection of civilians.
I can assure you that all the participants in the operation, but also all the NATO allies, even those who were not sending forces, keep a very close eye on how the conduct of the operation takes place. The NATO allies are firm believers in and supporters of the United Nations, without exception, and would never do anything—and have never done anything, in my view, with one slight exception—outside of that framework. But that exception was not Libya.
From the point of view of the NATO allies, of the NATO governments, they were within the mandate. There are a lot of them around the table. We had our extra partners as well: non-NATO European members and the Arabs. They also believed that this was within the mandate. And by the way, the UN secretary general has been very clear in his public statements that he considers this to be within the mandate. Then there was an international commission of inquiry on Libya, which also concluded that what NATO did was within the mandate. So, frankly, I think there is an overwhelming body of support that makes that case.
I would go even further to say that the operation couldn't have happened without NATO. There were a number of NATO allies in the time of that period of transition from when it went from being a coalition of the willing to being a NATO operation—even NATO allies—who said “we cannot contribute to this unless NATO does it”, for legal and political reasons within their own country. Our partners said the same thing—not all of them, but, for example, the Swedes, who were very clear in their own parliamentary procedure.
So our view is, first, it was within the mandate, and second, it couldn't have been done without us.