Pakistan is backing a Russian push for an investigation into civilian casualties in Libya during Nato’s bombing campaign to help the Libyan dissidents overthrow Col Muammar Gaddafi’s regime from power, diplomatic sources told APP.

During closed-door Security Council consultations on Libya on Wednesday, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN Abdullah Hussain Haroon said his delegation would support such a Council-mandated probe, the sources said.

The US and France are resisting any investigation into Nato’s human rights abuses in Libya.

US Ambassador Susan Rice dismissed Russia’s demand for an investigation as a ‘cheap stunt’ to distract attention away from the Syrian government’s crackdown on protesters.

Earlier, Russia’s Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said at his last month’s year-end press conference that an investigation was the only way to support Nato claims that it was not responsible for civilian deaths in Libya that occurred during a bombing campaign ostensibly designed under the aegis of the United Nations to protect civilians.

On Wednesday, the coming president of the Security Council also called for such an investigation. Ambassador Baso Sangqu of South Africa, who holds the rotating Security Council presidency for January, said he believed Nato overstepped its mandate in Libya enforcing a no-fly zone, and killing an untold number of civilians.

“We were alive to the fact that the implementation of the resolution itself would have its own problems, but we now hear strong voices that talk about many mistakes that were made. They were supposed to be precision strikes, but it was clear that those were not that precise.”