20110223
reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pressure mounted on the White House on Tuesday to intervene to stop Muammar Gaddafi's bloody crackdown on democracy protests as a lawmaker close to President Barack Obama urged oil firms to halt work in Libya.

The United States faced calls to impose sanctions but also to take direct action such as bombing Libyan airfields and imposing no-fly zones -- military steps that most analysts consider unlikely. Some critics questioned Obama's silence on the violence in which hundreds of Libyans have died.

U.S. officials called for an end to the violence but seemed to rule out any unilateral action, stressing the United States was working with other countries on a way forward.

Senator John Kerry, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged the White House to consider reimposing tough sanctions on Libya.

"World leaders must together put Colonel Gaddafi on notice that his cowardly actions will have consequences," Kerry said.

The White House said it was studying Kerry's proposal to reimpose sanctions that were lifted by the Bush administration but, for now, was focused on ending the bloodshed, which sent U.S. oil prices to near 2-1/2-year highs.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Kerry's Republican counterpart in the House of Representatives, said the United States and others "should impose economic sanctions, including freezing assets of the regime and imposing a ban on travel."

Obama did not mention Libya when he spoke about small business at a university in Ohio -- in contrast to his German counterpart Angela Merkel, who said she would back sanctions if Gaddafi did not halt the violence.