General David Richards suggested in an interview that NATO should attack Libyan infrastructure, which is not yet on its target list.
NATO is bombing Libya under a UN mandate to protect civilians and says it strikes only military targets. The leaders of Britain, France and the United States say they will not halt the campaign until Qaddafi leaves power.
Richards said the military campaign to date had been a “significant success” for NATO, but it needed to do more.
“If we do not up the ante now there is a risk that the conflict could result in Qaddafi clinging to power,” the Sunday Telegraph newspaper quoted him as saying.
“At present, NATO is not attacking infrastructure targets in Libya. But if we want to increase the pressure on Qaddafi’s regime then we need to give serious consideration to increasing the range of targets we can hit.”
Rebels have been fighting for three months against Qaddafi’s rule and control the city of Benghazi and the oil-producing east. The war has reached a virtual stalemate, with recent fighting centerd on the port city of Misrata in the west and in the Western Mountains region.
Richards was quoted as saying NATO was not targeting Qaddafi directly, “but if it happened that he was in a command and control center that was hit by NATO and he was killed, then that is within the rules.”
“If NATO withdraws its forces with Qaddafi still in power, then there is a significant risk that he will launch fresh attacks against the rebels,” he said.
The general said there had been “hardly any civilian casualties as a result of the extreme care NATO had taken in the selection of bombing targets.”
The Libyan government accused NATO of killing 11 people, including nine imams, in an airstrike on a guest house on the eastern city of Brega on Friday. NATO said the building it struck was a command-and-control center.
