African Union and Saudi Arabia are key absentees at a conference that aimed to solidify coalition
It was neither a council of war on the eve of battle nor a peace summit. Instead the London conference on Libya, attended by 44 foreign ministers and Libya's rebels and held against the backdrop of fierce fighting in the country, was an attempt to solidify the hastily assembled, novel and fragile coalition.
The very fact of the conference – held only 10 days after the start of Nato military strikes – was a remarkable achievement in logistics and diplomacy. As one Foreign Office official admitted: "We had bitter recent experience of military action taken on a unilateral basis. We are trying to achieve the opposite. We have learned the lessons of Iraq when there is poor planning and not enough agreement."
Yet the coalition, faced by the military determination of Gaddafi, does not always have time on its side. It cannot afford to go at the pace of the slowest in the coalition. David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy have been spending these past 10 days trying to speed up the coalition's pace while keeping the international operation together.
So the short term goals were to draw breath, confirm what has been agreed, broaden the coalition and strengthen links between countries willing to take military action, and those willing to support without arms. It was also a chance to put the rebels on an international stage and reassure the world they are democrats, not Islamists
Work was done on the humanitarian operation and thinking what a political settlement in Libya might look like. A new permanent contact group responsible for the politics of the coalition was formed.
One country, Sweden, a non-Nato nation, agreed to supply eight fighter aircraft to run the no-fly zone, and some Arab countries – Morocco and Gulf states – attended in a display of unity.
But there were also problems on show. The African Union failed to show up, and Saudi Arabia was absent. The Qatari prime minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jabr al-Thani admitted Arab military involvement "is not so big or so concrete, yet the crisis in Libya is our business, it is Arab business".
One of Qatar's jobs will be to chair the next meeting of the contact group, broaden the alliance and to oversee the sale of any Libyan oil held in rebel territories.
Yet the conference in the margins of the conference hall exposed fault lines in the international community over the next vital stages: whether to arm and recognise the rebels, and whether Gaddafi might leave voluntarily if he was given a chance to take exile rather than stand trial either in Libya or at the international criminal court.
Until now Britain has insisted that the arms embargo makes it impossible under UN law to arm the rebels, but the position has now started to shift.
The foreign secretary William Hague, in his closing press conference in the Foreign Office's Locarno Room, said: "In the UK's view, UN Security Council resolution 1970, which imposes an arms embargo among other sanctions, applies to the whole of Libya." But he added it would be consistent with the later resolution – 1973 – authorising the military action "to give people aid in order to defend themselves in particular circumstances."
The US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, speaking 15 minutes later in the same room, was even more clear, saying: "It is our interpretation that 1973 amended or overrode the absolute prohibition on arms to anyone in Libya, so that there could be a legitimate transfer of arms if a country should choose to do that."
British sources said US and UK lawyers agree that the instruction in 1973 resolution requiring the international community to protect civilians by all means necessary may in some circumstances allow the rebels to be armed to protect civilians.
Al-Thani also hinted this may be the next step, saying the effectiveness of air strikes had to be evaluated "after the while" to see whether other measures were required.
He suggested that the issue would have to be revisited if air strikes alone failed to accomplish their stated goal of protecting Libyan civilians.
"We are not inviting any military ground [troops] but we have to ... find a way to stop this bloodshed," he said.
Mahmoud Shammam, the Libyan interim council's head of media, told a press conference that arms could transform the military position: "We asked everybody to help us in many ways. One of them is giving our youth some real weapons.
"If you look to the reports that you have from the streets of Libya or from the cities of Libya you will see our people have very light arms. You can see just regular cars are fighting with machine guns. We don't have arms at all, otherwise we finish Gaddafi in a few days. We ask for the political support more than we are asking for the arms. But if we get both that would be great."
Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was much more circumspect: "Our mission is to protect civilians against any attacks, and the UN security council resolution applies to both sides. It requests the enforcement of an arms embargo, so we are there to protect people, not to arm people"
French foreign minister Alain Juppé also suggested the UN resolution did not give authority to arm rebels: "I remind you it is not part of the UN resolution, which France sticks to, but we are ready to discuss [arming] with our partners"
Franco Frattini, his Italian counterpart, was also wary, saying: "It is not possible to arm the rebels under the existing resolution. It is not something I would like to see. It would depend on which country would be in agreement."
The other unanswered question from the conference was whether Gadaffi should be allowed to seek exile.
The Libyan transitional council was clear that it wanted Gadaffi to stand trial in Libya based on evidence. Britain has been a public advocate of Gadaffi being sent to an international criminal court, but seemed to be bending on this yesterday.
Asked whether exile was an acceptable option, Hague said: "We are not engaged in the United Kingdom in looking for somewhere for him to go. That doesn't exclude others from doing so."