From Adrian Croft and Justyna Pawlak, Reuters:  Britain urged the world to exert greater pressure on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Thursday and the European Union said it was considering sending a humanitarian intervention force to the country.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague called for an international investigation into Libyan state violence, while Gaddafi’s forces stepped up their week-long struggle to crush protesters wanting to end his 41-year rule. …

The international community must "increase the pressure on a regime which by all accounts is now committing serious offences," Hague told BBC radio. …

Britain wants Libya suspended from the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is due to meet on Friday, Hague told Sky News.

The U.S. State Department said the United States backed Libya’s suspension from the council and was prepared to take additional steps to try to stop the violence.

Britain’s Defense Secretary Liam Fox said his country had been discussing with the NATO leadership how better to coordinate efforts to get people from a number of different countries out of Libya over the next few days. …

In Brussels, senior officials said the European Union was weighing a range of options to evacuate 5,000-6,000 EU citizens still in Libya, many of them oil company employees, and said one possibility was a military humanitarian intervention force.

"We are in contact with EU member states to see whether their facilities, civilian and military, can be deployed for this (evacuation of EU citizens)," a senior EU official said.  (photo: Reuters)

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