Nicolas Sarkozy has belittled Nato's role in the military operations against Muammar Gaddafi, re-igniting the row over who replaces the Americans in charge of the campaign in Libya.

Senior Nato officials said the alliance would decide within days whether to take over the bombing campaign against Gaddafi's forces and David Cameron announced that Nato would "shortly be providing the command and control and the machinery" for the attacks on ground targets in Libya.

The Nato decision is expected by Monday, before foreign ministers meet in London on Tuesday to discuss Libya. Senior officials were confident that the alliance would agree to assume command of all three elements of the campaign against Gaddafi – the air assaults, as well as the no-fly zone and arms embargo already under Nato command.

Turkey and France have been embroiled in a bitter row all week, with Ankara demanding that the Nato alliance, of which it is the member with the second biggest army after the US, takes over and Sarkozy opposed.

The air offensive on pro-Gaddafi ground targets is the most sensitive and divisive part of the Libya campaign. Putting Nato in charge could curb the attacks and hedge them with more restrictive rules of engagement. "The majority of those missions has been successful and may be close to completion," said Group Captain Geoffrey Booth, an officer at Nato headquarters in Brussels.

The US, Britain, France, and Turkey agreed on Thursday to put all the Libya operations under a Nato umbrella, but the deal ran into problems when all 28 member countries had to approve the accord. Sarkozy restarted the row on Friday at the end of a European Union summit in Brussels. "It would be playing into the hands of Colonel Gaddafi to say Nato is taking over," he told a press conference.

"Nato cannot swallow the United Arab Emirates and Qatar," he added in reference to the two Arab countries joining the western air campaign in Libya.

His remarks suggested there may be a clash in London on Tuesday at the conference that is supposed to settle who is in charge of the Libya campaign.

The Americans are eager to shed the leadership of the no-fly zone and the bombing operations launched last Saturday. Nato is still wrangling over whether to lead the third plank of the campaign, the air assaults on Gaddafi ground targets deemed to be a threat to Libyan civilians.

Sarkozy insisted that while Nato's military machinery could be used, the political leadership would be vested in a committee from the 11 countries taking part. That would exclude Turkey. The Nato issue was a practical and not a political one, he said. "The political co-ordination is with the 11-member coalition."

The signals from Sarkozy and Cameron, the two leading hawks on Libya, were contradictory. They discussed Libya after bumping into one another jogging in a Brussels park on Friday morning. Cameron said Nato was now exercising command and control of the no-fly zone and of the arms embargo. "The alliance is also planning for command of the wider operation."

Nato officials said the timing of the handover of the no-fly zone from US to alliance control was unclear, but would probably take 48 hours. The Nato operations are to be steered from its joint force command in Naples, while the nerve centre for the no-fly zone air sorties will be an air operations centre in Izmir in Turkey.

There was confusion last night over the extent of the arms embargo, when the UK Ministry of Defence displayed a map with Nato warships concentrating on the coastline facing areas controlled by pro-Gaddafi forces. Asked whether the embargo was designed to prevent the rebels from being reinforced by arms, Major General John Lorimer, the MoD's chief military spokesman, said he would not speculate.

Captain Karl Evans, a senior naval operations officer, said the navy patrols would cover the whole of Libya's coastline. The French press has reported that the rebels are being provided with arms.