Gaddafi troops take back cities as world powers talk

TRIPOLI (Agencies)

Western allies planning for a possible no-fly zone over Libya may find their deliberations overtaken by events, as Muammar Gaddafi’s forces close in on the opposition’s stronghold of Benghazi with tanks, infantry and air support. France’s Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Tuesday that the Group of Eight powers have failed to agree on military intervention in Libya, after the countries discussed proposals for a no-fly zone there. “For the moment I have not convinced them,” Juppe said on Europe 1 radio, referring to his talks with fellow G8 foreign ministers at a dinner on Monday night.

Juppe recognized that Gaddafi had the upper hand in his battle against Libya’s rebels, whom he has driven out of several towns this week with shelling and airstrikes.

“Gaddafi is scoring points,” Juppe said, adding that there was nothing to stop Gaddafi seizing the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

“Currently we do not have the military means because the international community has not decided to provide them,” he said.

The G8 powers agreed instead to turn to the U.N. Security Council for a resolution to “raise the pressure against the Gaddafi regime,” Juppe said, citing a possible sea embargo.

Forces loyal to Gaddafi launched attacks Monday on a key town which rebels have vowed to defend as the U.N. Security Council wrangled over Arab calls for a Libya no-fly zone, with Russia insisting “fundamental questions” remain.

Keeping up the pressure, U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday issued a new warning to Gaddafi, who he said had “lost his legitimacy and … needs to leave.”

European and Arab envoys emphasized the need for urgent U.N. action as Gaddafi’s forces advance. But because of the split between world powers, the Security Council would need several days to agree measures, diplomats said.

In Tripoli, the UN’s new envoy to Libya, Abdul Ilah Khatib, held talks with Foreign Minister Mussa Kussa to demand an end to the violence and access for humanitarian relief efforts, the world body said.

Regaining control of cities

Revolutionaries in Ajdabiya said four shells had crashed west of the town while a former officer who defected from Gaddafi’s air force said there had been air strikes.

Former colonel Jamal Mansur also said rebels had regained a foothold in Brega, 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the west, which the Libyan army said it captured on Sunday.

Ajdabiya guards vital roads north along the coast to the capital of Benghazi and east across the desert to the oil port of Tobruk, which has given the protesters control of eastern Libya up to the Egyptian border.

The lightly-armed revolutionaries have been pushed back some 200 kilometers by superior forces in the past week and are now only 170 kilometers from Benghazi, Libya’s second city with a population of around one million.

On the western front, Gaddafi’s forces entered the town of Zuwarah after clashes with rebels in which at least one person was killed, a witness and pro-Gaddafi source said.

Libyan army spokesman Colonel Milad Hussein said in Tripoli that government forces were “marching to cleanse the country” of insurgents, whom he called “rats and terrorists.”

But state television in Tripoli said former Libyan soldiers like Mansur who defected to the protesters would be pardoned if they surrender to government forces.

Mansur admitted the protesters were seriously ill-equipped and warned they could turn to urban guerrilla warfare.

“We are asking the West to carry out targeted strikes on military installations” as proposed by France.

	A no-fly zone may not make a decisive military difference, but could make a difference. The sooner it is done, the better
British PM David Cameron

Weighing no-fly zone

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Feb. 28 that the U.S. and NATO allies were considering a no-fly zone. Since then, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations Security Council have failed to decide on taking any kind of military action. And the Arab League didn’t give its support until March 12, by which time the protesters were losing ground.

Gaddafi has taken advantage of that indecision, launching an offensive that has pushed the revolutionaries back from town after town.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have been the most forceful advocates for a no-fly zone as a way to limit Gaddafi’s forces and protect civilians. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been wary of the commitment, as has the Obama administration.

“A no-fly zone may not make a decisive military difference, but could make a difference,” Cameron said in London on Monday. “The sooner it is done, the better, because the effect it will have will be so much the greater.”

A senior Libyan opposition figure, Mahmoud Jibril, met with Clinton in Paris on Monday and extended rebel requests beyond a no-fly zone to include air strikes to disable three Gaddafi- controlled airfields, supplies of combat material, and other measures, according to a U.S. official who briefed reporters on the condition his name not be used.

The U.S. official said afterward that the administration is trying to determine what actions Arab nations may take to support the protesters.

“While the Arab League has called for a no-fly zone to be imposed over Libya, a move seen as crucial to winning U.N. endorsement, Arab countries have made it clear that they don’t intend to take part and may not contribute significantly to paying its costs. It would be carried out by the international community and by those countries who are able to impose it, like the NATO countries, for instance,” the Arab League’s ambassador to the U.S., Hussein Hassouna, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television March 8.