BRUSSELS, Belgium - NATO's bombing campaign against Libya has been unique in history due to the unprecedented precision of the alliance's airstrikes but it has also highlighted shortcomings in the arsenals of its European members, Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Monday.
Fogh Rasmussen also said the attacks would continue until Libya's opposition National Transition Council is able to ensure security throughout the country and would not stop even if Moammar Gadhafi is captured.
"What will play a crucial role is the capability of the National Transition Council to actually ensure effective protection of the civilian population, because that's the key in our UN mandate," he said.
Fogh Rasmussen said that NATO has been implementing the mandate with "unprecedented precision."
"No comparable air operation in history has been so accurate, and so careful in avoiding harm to civilians," he said.
NATO has conducted 22,000 sorties, including over 8,000 strike missions, since the first attacks were launched in March.
Gadhafi's regime frequently claimed civilians were killed in the airstrikes leading up to the fall of the Tripoli, but the reports have not been independently confirmed until now.
Russia and China have accused the alliance for overstepping its U.N. Security Council mandate to enforce a no-fly zone and protect civilians. African Union nations, which pushed for a negotiated solution to the civil war, have said that the NATO-led bombing bombings had undermined their peace efforts.
The Libyan campaign also exposed deep rifts within the Western military alliance itself. Only eight of the alliances 28 members agreed to participate.
Fogh Rasmussen said that although European allies and Canada led the effort, the mission could not have been accomplished without capabilities which only the U.S. military could offer, such as drones, intelligence and refuelling and transport aircraft.
"Let me put it bluntly, those capabilities are vital for all of us," he said. "More allies should be willing to obtain them."
The alliance plans to formulate a set of proposals ahead of the alliance's summit in May in Chicago on how to improve pooling and sharing of resources among member states whose defence budgets have been steadily shrinking at a time of economic austerity.
