The Obama Administration Friday appeared to be moving ahead with proposals to impose sanctions on the authoritarian Gaddafi regime of Libya which
has been using lethal force against its own people resulting in hundreds of casualties.
A meeting in this regard was held at the White House which among others was attended by Tom Malinowski of the Human Rights Watch.
It is believed that while the US Treasury Department is looking into the possibility of slapping unilateral sanctions on Libya, it would also support a European Union resolution to be tabled by France, its current president, at the UN Security Council later Friday.
The move to slap sanctions gained momentum after Obama spoke with his key European allies over phone - French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameroon and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
In a statement, the White House said the leaders discussed the range of options that both the US and European countries are preparing to hold the Libyan government accountable for its actions, as well as planning for humanitarian assistance.
"In line with the statement that was unanimously adopted by the Council on February 22, concrete measures are now necessary, notably to permit immediate access to humanitarian assistance and to sanction those responsible for the violence against Libya's civilian population," said a statement issued by the office of the French President following the telephonic conversation.
Earlier in the day, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that the US is closely looking into sanctions.
"I don't want to get into specifics. We're working very closely with the international community, and we're hoping and believe that the international community will speak with one voice, as I think is often the case," he said.
"When the international community comes together and speaks with one voice it has a powerful impact in terms of persuading a government like Libya's to do the right thing, to
stop the kind of violence it's been perpetrating on its own people," Carney said.
"We're examining a lot of options -- sanctions are one of them, but I don't want to specify that one is going to happen and one's not going to happen. We're working with our partners on that," he added.
Carney said there are no options that the US is taking off the table.
The Libyan Interior Ministry has put the death toll in over a week of violence at 300, but Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has claimed that the crackdown on anti-regime protesters has killed as many as 1,000 people.