Apaches go on warpath as Russia loses patience

British Apache attack helicopters are to be deployed today for the first time in the campaign against Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, as the international community ratchets up the pressure on the embattled Libyan leader.

World leaders at the G8 summit in France yesterday issued a joint call for Gaddafi to step down. Even Russia - which had been critical of Nato's campaign of air strikes - accepted that the Libyan regime had lost legitimacy.

With intelligence reports suggesting the dictator's behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic, Prime Minister David Cameron said Gaddafi was "feeling the pressure".

He played down an offer from Russia to mediate in the conflict, insisting that the only resolution involved Gaddafi leaving power.

Mr Cameron said he had thought "very carefully" before taking the decision to deploy the Apaches for close-quarter combat - and that there were always risks.

"As soon as you make that decision, you have to be prepared as Prime Minister of our country to bear that risk," he said.

"I think very carefully before all the decisions we take. I clearly thought very carefully before we took part in any operations."

He added: "Three months into the operation, I believe we are entering a new phase.

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"It is right that we are ratcheting up the military, the economic and the political pressure on the Gaddafi regime."

Asked about the Russian foreign ministry's mediation offer, the Prime Minister - who held bilateral talks with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev last night - said he "did not recognise a Russian offer to mediate".

He went on: "I think the most important thing is to send the same message down the pipe every time when one of these offers appears, which is Gaddafi has to go.

"Like many others, I believe it is completely impossible to deliver (UN Security Council] resolution 1973 and protect people while Gaddafi is still there."

A 25-page communique issued by the leaders of the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and the UK included a call for the Libyan leader to stand down. It says: "Gaddafi and the Libyan government have failed to fulfil their responsibility to protect the Libyan population and have lost all legitimacy. He has no future in a free, democratic Libya. He must go."

US president Barack Obama - after talks about Libya with French president Nicolas Sarkozy - said: "We are joined in resolve to finish the job."

In addition to calling on the Libyan leader to step down, the G8 communique also criticised Syria's deadly crackdown on protesters and included the promise of a 12 billion aid package for Tunisia and Egypt.

Professor Paul Wilkinson, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at St Andrews University, said the communique was "very significant".He added: "It is pretty interesting that Russia has signed up to this communique, which is very strongly worded.

"It is a very key statement and, coming from world leaders, it exerts a very strong diplomacy pressure on him. Russia has, in the past, been reluctant to be involved."

Mr Cameron was asked about an apparent suggestion from Mr Sarkozy that the two leaders could visit the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi together. "President Sarkozy is always full of good ideas," he replied.

The Nato air-strike campaign got under way in Libya in March in response to a brutal crackdown by Gaddafi's regime on rebel forces in the east of the country. The uprising against his rule emerged in February in the aftermath of similar rebellions in Egypt and Tunisia, a movement since dubbed the "Arab Spring".

John Baron, the only Conservative MP to oppose intervention in Libya in a parliamentary vote in March, warned that the deployment of Apache helicopters represented a further escalation of the conflict that could put the mission outside the terms of UN resolution 1973.

"I think it is an escalation because once again we are getting down further and further into this conflict," he said.

The Commons vote approving British involvement followed a debate couched very much in terms of the protection of Libyan civilians, the Basildon and Billericay MP said.

He added: "The bottom line is that, if we had that debate again and said we were going to be putting military advisers in on the ground and deploying Apache aircraft… I think the debate might have taken on a different flavour.

"At what point does the resolution stop allowing Nato's air force and military intervention attacking Colonel Gaddafi?"

SNP Westminster leader and defence spokesman Angus Robertson said: "The situation in Libya appears to have reached a stalemate and civilians continue to pay a heavy price. The Ministry of Defence needs to explain how the deployment of these Apache helicopters will hasten a resolution to the conflict."