Ed Miliband has accused David Cameron and other world leaders of failing to stand by Libya, contributing in part to the crisis in the Mediterranean.
The Labour leader said the UK had repeated the same mistakes “in post-conflict planning” for Libya as were made in Iraq and the current refugee situation should have been anticipated.
Conservatives denounced the remarks. Mr Cameron called them “ill-judged”.
But Mr Miliband rejected claims he had politicised the issue as “nonsense”.
Setting out his foreign policy priorities in a speech in London, Mr Miliband also said Mr Cameron had presided over the “biggest loss of influence in a generation” and placed the UK’s future in the European Union in doubt.
The BBC’s assistant political editor Norman Smith said Labour were making clear that they were not blaming the prime minister for the recent deaths in the Mediterranean.
But Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said any suggestion of “political point-scoring” on the back of a “total human tragedy” was “pretty distasteful”.
‘Avoidable’
Mr Miliband voted in favour of UN-authorised air strikes against former Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi in 2011, designed to stop the slaughter of Libyan civilians in Benghazi.
The intervention led to the collapse of the Gaddafi regime but the country has descended into chaos since then.
An estimated 800 people died when their boats sank off the Libyan coast on Sunday while more than 35,000 people are thought to have crossed from Africa to Europe this year, many of them being transited through Libya and departing from there.
In a speech in London, the Labour leader suggested that the UK and the wider international community had let Libya down. BBC
