No-Fly Zone Eyed in Libya

• MARCH 1, 2011

By MARGARET COKER in Tripoli and CHARLES LEVINSON in Benghazi, Libya

Col. Moammar Gadhafi went on a broad offensive Monday in a bid to shift momentum against Libya's uprising, as the White House imposed record sanctions against the embattled strongman and international leaders discussed clipping his wings by imposing a no-fly zone.

 

Margaret Coker reports from Libya's capital, Tripoli, where pro-Gadhafi forces cracked down Monday against anti-government protesters while the government successfully recaptured a key oil town. Plus, Warren Buffett looks for his next big deal.

Forces loyal to Col. Gadhafi attacked two opposition-held cities east of the capital of Tripoli on Monday, said witnesses and rebel army commanders. A rebel commander said Monday that government forces regained control of a seafront oil-terminal town east of Tripoli, extending eastward the government's front line against the rebels.

The government's efforts to regain recently lost territory indicates the regime is digging in for a long stand-off. Col. Gadhafi's opponents, including mutinous army units, hold nearly the entire eastern half of the country, much of the oil infrastructure and some cities in the west. In Tripoli, Col. Gadhafi's forces are reinforcing defenses as the city on Monday exuded an uneasy calm.
The international community redoubled its efforts to pressure Col. Gadhafi to surrender power in Tripoli. The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday froze $30 billion in assets controlled by Col. Gadhafi and his family, in what the Obama administration said was the single-largest seizure of foreign funds in U.S. history.
The Treasury's action comes on top of sanctions passed unanimously by the United Nations Security Council on Saturday and the European Union's own sanctions against the Gadhafi family.
On Monday, France promised to send two planes with humanitarian aid to Benghazi, an eastern opposition stronghold and Libya's second-largest city, French Prime Minister François Fillon told RTL radio. The aid, including medicine and doctors, would be the first direct Western help for the uprising, he said, adding it was the start of a "massive operation of humanitarian support" for the east and that Paris was studying "all solutions"—including military options.
Also Monday, the U.S. and European allies said they were entertaining a full range of options to press Col. Gadhafi to stop a bloody crackdown on antiregime protesters. In Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Europeans discussed setting up a no-fly zone over Libyan airspace, and the Pentagon repositioned warships and planes in the waters off Libya to be ready to enforce such a zone or to deliver humanitarian aid.

Regional Upheaval

Col. Gadhafi and his officials, meanwhile, sought to counter reports that Libya's uprising was a popular one. "My people love me," Col. Gadhafi said in an interview with ABC News. "They would die for me."
Libya's Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, Khalid Kiam, said recent international penalties were part of a concerted campaign to weaken Libya and take control of its vast oil resources. He said allegations of government forces' indiscriminate firing on demonstrators and widespread killing of civilians were false.
"The conspiracy is big," he said. "We don't understand how the international community is taking sides when their reports are based on false media reports."
Mr. Kiam said the Libyan government intends to restart a national process with tribal leaders and prominent intellectuals around the country to bring about a peaceful solution to the unrest. It was unclear who the government has invited to such negotiations.
Witnesses said troops, tanks and artillery from the two elite brigades that defend Tripoli have been moved in recent days to ring the southeast outskirts of town. Air traffic has also increased over the past two nights near the Mitiga military airport on Tripoli's east side, said neighbors.
Forces loyal to Col. Gadhafi on Monday attempted to bomb Benghazi, said Col. Tareq Saad Hussein, one of the opposition colonels on the committee in charge of running defense matters in the city.
The attacking airplanes were repulsed by rebel antiaircraft weapons and forced to retreat, said Col. Hussein. He said the aircraft proceeded to drop their payloads on a munitions-storage facility in Ajdabiya, a rebel-controlled city about 120 miles west of Benghazi.

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AP Photo

Residents of Al-Zawiya, a city to the west of Tripoli, display their weapons in the main square on Sunday.

There was no word on casualties. These and other reports of military maneuvers by the sides have been difficult to confirm, as both communications and movements throughout the country remain challenged.
Mr. Kiam in Tripoli said the government wouldn't consider a large-scale military offensive to regain lost territory until negotiations with tribal leaders failed. He said there was no deadline for these negotiations.
Col. Hussein said Monday that Ras Lanoof, a small seafront town just east of Tripoli that had been under rebel control, fell to about 150 government troops late Sunday. He said pro-Gadhafi forces are consolidating along the de facto front line between the rebel-controlled eastern half and pro-Gadhafi western half of the country.
Rebel forces appear to be stepping up training of new soldiers and preparations for their deployment. Col. Hussein said he was concerned that the fall of Ras Lanoof, the site of a large oil refinery, puts pro-Gadhafi forces within striking distance of a key power station that provides electricity to Benghazi and other towns in eastern Libya.
Misrata, the nation's third-largest city, has been held by rebel forces for more than a week. There, defense patrols claimed to have shot down an attack helicopter that came from the direction of Tripoli.
Residents said that in the previous two days, they repelled attacks from government forces on the city's radio antenna, an installation that rebel city commanders are using to muster defensive patrols and organize basic services. Two civilians were shot and killed by presumed government snipers who were hiding in a building near the airport, says a medical worker who saw the bodies.
Pockets of Tripoli, and towns to the west of the capital, also appear to remain under rebel control. In Zawiya, an oil-industry center west of Tripoli, residents said the government has moved some heavy armor to help ring the town but that rebels appear to control the center.
Most neighborhoods in Tripoli—home to two million of the country's estimated six million people—were calm. The city remained firmly within the government's control and residents were divided about their loyalties.
Many stores downtown reopened, and traffic in the streets increased. Long lines were formed outside banks by Libyans wanting to receive the equivalent of $400 per family that Col. Gadhafi pledged in a bid to shore up public loyalty.
At a bank located on the main commercial street in Fashloom, a neighborhood that has seen multiple antigovernment protests in the last two weeks, people lining up for the newly announced cash subsidy said they believed foreign agitators were behind the rebellion in the east.
"They aren't real Libyans in Benghazi," said Ahmad, 17, whose father was in line for money. "They are radicals trying to destroy us and our beautiful nation."
In the eastern suburb of Tajura, several hundred angry protesters took to the streets in the early afternoon to denounce Col. Gadhafi and his regime after burying a man, Abdel Fattah Al-Misrati, that residents and neighbors said had been shot in the head during Friday's antigovernment street protests.
Standing on a hilltop cemetery overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, men from Tajoura shouted "Gadhafi, Tajoura will be your grave."
Residents described their district, an industrial suburb of the capital, as a war zone each evening since the start of the rebellion in mid-February. Security police and paramilitary forces patrol Tajura overnight, arresting men and firing weapons in what residents believe is a tactic to scare them into ending their demonstrations.

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Sipa Press

A protester killed by pro-regime forces last week is buried in Tripoli.

"We are strong and we scare them, despite the fact we have no guns and only our voices," said Abdul, who described himself as a sub-commander for the antigovernment forces in the district.
While the funeral progressed, blue pickups belonging to the Ministry of Interior forces and white unmarked Toyota Tundra sport utility vehicles carrying paramilitary forces armed with AK-47s amassed on the traffic circle on the other side of the hill from the cemetery. When the men dispersed from the place and started speaking to foreign journalists, two of the SUVs sped down the street past the journalists, opening fire in a brief blast of bullets into the air. The Tajura residents scattered but quickly regrouped about half a mile away from the cemetery at one of the city's main squares in an impromptu antiregime protest.
Two men who described themselves as rebel sub-commanders of the area urged foreign journalists to leave before government security forces tried to forcibly break up the protest.
When the government-sponsored minibus and driver drove away with the journalists, a phalanx of 17 security vehicles could be seen speeding toward the Tajura square where the protest had been taking place. A witness later said the protesters scattered again, and the security vehicles remained patrolling the neighborhood as darkness fell.