Oil installations ablaze in Libya as battles rage

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Libyan rebels fire rockets at government troops on the frontline on March 9, 2011 near Ras Lanuf, Libya. More photos »

AP – EDS NOTE: RECROP OF ABC102 Libyan Leader Moammar Gadhafi arrives at a hotel to give television interviews …

By PAUL SCHEMM and MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press Paul Schemm And Maggie Michael, Associated Press – 33 mins ago

RAS LANOUF, Libya – A giant yellow fireball shot into the sky, trailed by thick plumes of black smoke Wednesday after fighting between rebels and forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi set two oil installations ablaze and inflicted yet more damage on Libya's crippled energy industry.

In the west, Gadhafi claimed victory in recapturing Zawiya, the city closest to the capital that had fallen into opposition hands. The claim could not immediately be verified; phone lines there have not been working during a deadly, six-day siege.

State TV showed a crowd of hundreds, purportedly in Zawiya's main square, shouting "The people want Colonel Gadhafi!" but the location of the rally could not be independently confirmed.

Western journalists based in Tripoli were taken late Wednesday to a stadium on the outskirts of Zawiya that was filled with Gadhafi loyalists waving green flags in a similar scene, complete with fireworks. Libyan TV cameras filmed the celebrations as food, drinks and cooking oil were distributed.

Government escorts refused journalists' requests to visit the city's main square.

The fall of Zawiya to anti-Gadhafi residents early on in the uprising that began Feb. 15 illustrated the initial, blazing progress of the opposition. But Gadhafi has seized the momentum, battering the rebels with airstrikes and artillery fire and repulsing their westward march toward the capital, Tripoli.

Gadhafi's successes have left Western powers struggling to come up with a plan to support the rebels without becoming ensnared in the complex and fast-moving conflict. On Wednesday, a high-ranking member of the Libyan military flew to Cairo with a message for Egyptian army officials from Gadhafi, but no further details were known.

President Barack Obama's national security team weighed how to force Gadhafi from power and halt his crackdown on rebels, but the White House said no action was imminent and set no timeline as attention shifted to a pivotal NATO session in Brussels.

Click image to see photos of protests in Libya

AFP/Marco Longari

The NATO alliance said it was planning for any eventuality in the Libyan crisis. But with Defense Secretary Robert Gates preparing to join a meeting of alliance defense chiefs to discuss military options on Thursday, there was little sign they would agree to set up a no-fly zone over the North African country.

A rebel spokesman said Wednesday they will buy weapons if the international community fails to declare a no-fly zone.

"If a no-fly zone is not imposed, we do have the means to get armaments. We don't expect any country to refuse to deal with us in terms of an arms sale," said Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, a spokesman for the rebels' provisional transitional national council.

He did not elaborate or say where the rebels would get the money for arms.

Britain and France are pushing for the U.N. to create a no-fly zone over the country, and while the U.S. may be persuaded to sign on, such a move is unlikely to win the backing of veto-wielding Security Council members Russia and China, which traditionally object to such steps as infringements on national sovereignty.

Gadhafi said in a Turkish television interview that Libyans would fight back if Western nations imposed a no-fly zone to prevent his regime from using its air force to bomb government opponents staging a rebellion.

He said imposing the restrictions would prove the West's real intention was to seize his country's oil wealth.

"Such a situation would be useful," Gadhafi said. "The Libyan people would understand their real aims to take Libya under their control, to take their freedoms and to take their oil and all Libyan people will take up arms and fight."

In eastern Libya, an Associated Press reporter at Ras Lanouf near the front line of fighting saw an explosion from the area of the Sidr oil facility, 360 miles (580 kilometers) east of Tripoli.

Three columns of thick smoke rose from the area, apparently from burning oil.

Mustafa Gheriani, an opposition spokesman, said the government artillery hit a pipeline supplying Sidr from oil fields in the desert. An oil storage depot also was hit, apparently by an airstrike, he said.

Gheriani accused Gadhafi forces of intentionally targeting oil facilities as a warning to Europe that the chaos in Libya will hurt oil supplies.

"Gadhafi thinks he can put pressure on Europe, but I think this is just going to work against him," Gheriani told the AP.

Shukri Ghanem, chairman of the Libya's National Oil Corp., said the Sidr explosion was from "a small tank for diesel" that caught fire and he insisted it would not affect oil production.

Ras Lanouf is the westernmost point seized by rebels moving along the country's main highway on the Mediterranean coast. Four bodies were brought to the morgue at the hospital in Ras Lanouf, doctors said.

In Cairo, an Egyptian army official told the AP on condition of anonymity that Maj. Gen. Abdul-Rahman bin Ali al-Said al-Zawi, the head of Libya's logistics and supply authority, was asking to meet Egypt's military rulers.

Diplomatic attempts to calm the crisis accelerated Wednesday.

A Libyan envoy met with Portugal's foreign minister in Lisbon on Wednesday, and an envoy will hold talks in Athens on Thursday with Greece's deputy foreign minister. The visits come ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Thursday to discuss the situation in Libya.

The violence in Libya has taken a toll on the country's oil production. For the past week, government forces and rebels have been battling around several key oil ports east — Brega, Ras Lanouf and Sidr. At their peak, those three export terminals handled about 715,000 barrels of crude per day, or roughly 45 percent of the country's exports, according to figures published in industry publication Africa Energy. A fourth eastern port, Marsa al-Harigah, handled another 220,000 barrels per day.

In total, those four ports would then account for almost 60 percent of the country's crude exports.

"We were already seeing Libya as pretty much being closed," said Samuel Cizsuk, Mideast oil analyst with IHS Global Insight in London. "It was only a question of time before the escalating violence would damage oil facilities."

"Libya has been discounted from the global markets," he said.

The British Broadcasting Corp., meanwhile, said three of its staff had been detained, beaten and subjected to mock executions by pro-regime soldiers while attempting to reach Zawiya on Monday. The BBC said the men were held for 21 hours before they were released, and have since left Libya. It reported the details of their detention in bulletins late on Wednesday.

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Michael reported from Tripoli. Ryan Lucas in Benghazi, Libya, Bradley Klapper and Matthew Lee in Washington, Derek Gatopoulos in Athens and Tarek El-Tablawy in Cairo contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110310/ap_on_re_af/af_libya

NATO could easily impose no-fly zone in Libya

AP – Anti-Libyan Leader Moammar Gadhafi rebels, prepare to fire rockets during fighting against pro- Gadhafi …

By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN and SLOBODAN LEKIC, Associated Press Michael Weissenstein And Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press – Wed Mar 9, 7:33 pm ET

CAIRO – Western leaders know NATO jets could easily force Moammar Gadhafi's few dozen Cold War-era warplanes from the skies and rob the Libyan dictator of a powerful weapon against rebels trying to oust him. But they're wary of involvement.

Imposing a no-fly zone from a string of Mediterranean bases and aircraft carriers could become a complex, long-term commitment for the U.S. and its allies. It would require airstrikes on Gadhafi's anti-aircraft weapons and risk drawing the West into another grueling military conflict in the Muslim world.

The Libyan rebels, who lack planes, have pleaded for such a zone — a plan endorsed by Britain, France and some key U.S. lawmakers. But NATO nations appeared torn Wednesday between the desire for action and fears of unintended consequences in a conflict that has divided Libya and driven oil prices to 2 1/2-year highs.

The White House said a meeting of President Barack Obama's top security advisers would not result in an immediate decision on U.S. action. NATO said it was planning for "all eventualities" but gave little sign of moving to set up a no-fly zone.

"NATO is not looking to intervene in Libya," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.

Although many nations want to tip the balance of military power away from Gadhafi, protecting civilians would be the key public rationale for any no-fly arrangement.

A senior U.S. official in Brussels said a no-fly zone would be "a difficult, costly and large operation," and noted that there was no evidence of any large-scale bombardment of civilians. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates observed last week that attacking Libyan air defenses would be necessary before imposing a no-fly zone, and would be tantamount to war. Gadhafi has warned of retaliation against no-fly patrols.

Weighing heavily on the debate are the lessons of Iraq and the Balkans, where no-fly zones lasting years were credited with preventing much bloodshed in the 1990s but still did not stop some massacres.

The U.S., France and UK declared no-fly zones for fixed-wing aircraft after the 1991 Gulf War in order to protect Kurds in Iraq's north and Shiites in the south from Saddam Hussein's air force.

However, Saddam circumvented them by using helicopters to devastating effect when he hunted down dissenters through marshes while putting down protests across southern Iraq, said Michael Rubin, a Middle East scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative U.S. think tank.

Rubin, who advocates a no-fly zone over Libya to protect civilians, says the ban must include helicopter flights.

Other U.S. experts have cited the Iraq experience as an argument against a no-fly zone.

"The no-fly zone remained in place for about 12 years without forcing change in Saddam's policies," George Friedman, CEO of the Stratfor intelligence analysis group, wrote in a recent report. "The same is likely to be true in Libya. The no-fly zone is a low-risk action with little ability to change the military reality that creates an impression of decisive action."

And such a zone might fail to eliminate one of the major threats from the air.

Gadhafi has between two and three dozen Russian-built Mil helicopter gunships, some of which have mounted the deadliest known attacks against the rebellion. The fast NATO fighter jets would have a hard time detecting and targeting the slow-moving, ground-hugging helicopters.

After ethnic fighting erupted in Bosnia, the U.N. Security Council ordered a no-fly zone in 1992 to protect areas under government control from strikes by rebel Serbian jets.

Allied interceptors shot down four Serbian attack jets, but the zone failed to stop fighting on the ground. In the bloodiest incident, Serbian troops overran the government-held enclave of Srebrenica and massacred 7,000 captured soldiers and refugees in the worst slaughter in Europe since World War II.

A no-fly zone requires complex planning on legal authority, rules of engagement and details on how much territory it covers and during what times of day, said David Deptula, a retired U.S. lieutenant general who oversaw a no-fly zone over northern Iraq after the 1991 war.

"This isn't just sending a bunch of airplanes to shoot down other aircraft," he said.

The zone need not span all of Libya, one of Africa's largest countries, because much of the fighting has been confined to its coastal strip.

NATO and the U.S. say they would not act without U.N. Security Council authorization, and Western diplomats have said a Britain- and France-backed resolution to impose a no-fly zone won't be introduced to the council unless it is endorsed by the Arab League and the African Union at meetings in coming days.

Gadhafi's pilots would almost certainly be routed if they tried to flout a Western flight ban.

Since the 1990s, poor maintenance and lack of funding have shrunk Gadhafi's fleet of more than 400 fighter-bombers, light attack jets and helicopter gunships to a few dozen aircraft. What remains are mostly Sukhoi Su-22 and Mig-23 fighter bombers and Yugoslav-made Jastreb light strike jets dating from the late 1960s. Several have been destroyed by the insurgents, or been flown out of the country by pilots defecting from Gadhafi's forces.

The government has only a handful of planes designed to intercept other aircraft, the Mig-21 and Mig-25, also dating from the 1960s.

NATO officials say they could quickly deploy 200-300 jets to Libya from bases stretching from Gibraltar to Greece, and from U.S. carriers in the Mediterranean.

These would include top-of-the-line Eurofighter Typhoons used by the British, Italian and Spanish air forces. Also available are the formidable French Dassault Rafale fighter and the U.S. Boeing Co.'s F-18 Super Hornet, the backbone of U.S. Navy air power.

The alliance also would have a huge advantage in its AWACS planes — whose rotating radars can look 200 miles (320 kilometers) deep into enemy airspace, monitor all aerial movements over Libyan territory and direct planes to any violators of the no-fly zone.

They also are equipped with the latest air-to-air missiles, which are far more sophisticated than the Soviet-built models of the 1980s in the Libyan arsenal.

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Rebecca Santana in Baghdad and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110310/ap_on_re_af/af_libya_no_fly