20110425
reuters

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Britain and the United States plan to step up military pressure on Muammar Gaddafi on Tuesday, as the Libyan leader's army presses its bloody siege of the rebel-held city of Misrata.

More than a month of air strikes in a British and French-led NATO mission to protect Libyan civilians have failed to dislodge Gaddafi or bring big gains for anti-government rebels who hold much of east Libya, raising fears of a lingering stalemate.

British Defence Secretary Liam Fox and Britain's Chief of the Defence Staff General David Richards will meet U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington.

"The meeting will be about how we can put military pressure on the regime, and that will include the tooth and the tail -- the people pulling the trigger to kill civilians in Misrata and the people supplying them," a Ministry of Defence source said.

As Libya has descended into civil war, counter-attacks by government forces have underlined Gaddafi will not go the same way as fellow leaders in Egypt and Tunisia did in the tide of popular unrest that has rolled across the Arab world.

The Libyan leader has vowed to fight to the death.

The war has split the oil producer, Africa's fourth biggest, into a government-held western area round the capital Tripoli and an eastern region held by ragged but dedicated rebels.

Troops loyal to Gaddafi have extended their campaign to pound Berber towns in Libya's Western Mountains while battling rebels around the port of the western hold-out city of Misrata.