US military ‘fully involved’ in talks on Libya options

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WASHINGTON – The US military has been “fully involved” in high-level talks on Washington’s response to the crisis in Libya and is assessing options to be presented to the White House, a senior US official said Thursday.

“We have a wide range of tools — financial, sanctions, multilateral actions — and we are considering all of them,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters.

“The military is fully involved in these discussions and doing its own thinking about options that can be presented to the president” and commander-in-chief Barack Obama.

Crowley said a multitude of US agencies and departments have been meeting “constantly on this since last week when the events began to unfold in Libya (and) the military has been a full participant in these discussions.”

While Washington has called for an immediate end to the violence that has left hundreds of protesters dead, the United States has been careful not to antagonize the regime of Moamer Kadhafi which is grappling with the sharpest challenge to his grip on power in four decades.

Crowley said some 6,000 US citizens in Libya had registered with the US embassy in Tripoli before the crisis.