William Hague press conference on Libyan situation and evacuation of British citizens

William Hague press conference on Libyan situation and evacuation of British citizens; ENGLAND: London: Foreign Office: INT William Hague MP (Foreign Secretary) along to podium and press conference SOT - The safety of British nationals in Libya remains our top priority / a charter flight is this afternoon leaving Gatwick airport for Tripoli to bring British nationals home from Libya / another flight planned to depart later this evening / a third flight will leave early tomorrow morning if it is needed / we will send as many planes as necessary to bring home British nationals / HMS Cumberland will arrive off Libyan waters tonight / over the past week hundreds of British nationals have left Libya on scheduled flights / there are at least 300 remaining in the Tripoli area / some expected scheduled flights have not materialised so we decided to send these chartered flights as rapidly as possible / we're one of very few countries to have sent rapid deployment teams, three in total, to Libya so we have a robust specialist presence on the ground / we've also deployed staff to Libya's border with Tunisia to assist those who have made their way to the border / we have a team of at least 50 dedicated staff at the Foreign Office working night and day, taking calls from British citizens and implementing our emergency plans / our preference is for people to leave on commercial flights or our charter flights, rather than to send in military flights without permission, which is obviously riskier for the safety of all involved although we don't by any means rule out doing that / no one can fail to be deeply concerned about the plight of as many as 170 British nationals in the desert in Libya, the vast majority of whom work for oil companies in desert camps alongside the nationals of many other countries / these camps are remote, isolated, scattered, dependent on food or water on supplies from Libyan cities severaly disrupted by violence and unrest and some have been subjected...