Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s tanks and artillery struck a rebel-held town and other loyalist forces advanced on Libya’s main rebel bastion of Benghazi yesterday as diplomatic efforts to stop him appeared to lose momentum.
Italy, a potential base for a no-fly zone proposed by Britain and France, ruled out military intervention to support an increasingly vulnerable-looking rebellion against Qaddafi’s rule.
“We cannot have war, the international community should not, does not want and cannot do it,” Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in Rome.
As the Libyan army told people in Benghazi to lay down their arms, aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres said the violence had forced it to withdraw its staff from Benghazi and begin moving teams to Alexandria in Egypt.
“Security conditions have made it effectively impossible for medical teams to travel safely to areas where the fighting has created the greatest need,” it said.
Residents in rebel-held Misrata, 200km east of the capital Tripoli, Qaddafi’s stronghold, said his forces had attacked the city using tanks and artillery.
“Very heavy bombardments are taking place now from three sides. They are using heavy weapons including tanks and artillery ... They have yet to enter the town,” said one resident, called Mohammed, by telephone.
In Benghazi, where the revolt began, residents said they had found leaflets lying in the city streets suggesting that if they gave up the fight against Qaddafi now, they would not be harmed or punished.
The leaflets accused rebels of being driven by al-Qaeda and high on drugs, an allegation routinely leveled by the government against an uprising that was inspired by pro-democracy rebellions that toppled the Egyptian and Tunisian presidents.
Salah Ben-Saud, a retired undersecretary at the Agriculture Ministry, said in Benghazi that life in the town was normal and “pro-Qaddafi people have not really shown their face.”
“There were rumors that he [Qaddafi] would try to take back Benghazi and that made people a bit nervous, but he didn’t and people here don’t think he would succeed anyway if he tried,” he said.
Thousands gathered in a square in Benghazi on Tuesday evening denouncing Qaddafi as a tyrant and throwing shoes and other objects at his image projected upside down on a wall.
Foreign powers have condemned Qaddafi’s crackdown but show little appetite for action to support the revolt.
Supporters of a no-fly zone to halt Libyan government air strikes on rebels circulated a draft resolution at the UN Security Council on Tuesday that would authorize one, but other states said questions remained.
The draft was distributed at a closed-door meeting by Britain and Lebanon after the Arab League called on the council on Saturday to set up a no-fly zone as Qaddafi’s troops advanced against the rebels based in the east.
German Ambassador Peter Wittig told reporters after the meeting his country still had queries, and noted that while the Arab League had called for a no-fly zone it also opposed any foreign military intervention.
Veto powers Russia, China and the US, along with Portugal, Germany and South Africa are among the members that have doubts about the wisdom of a no-fly zone.
A senior Libyan foreign ministry official said the government hoped to regain all rebel-held territories soon.
“We hope [it will be done] as soon as possible. I hope it will be in a matter of days,” Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said.
In a televised speech, Qaddafi taunted Western countries that have backed the imposition of a no-fly zone to come and get him.
“France now raises its head and says that it will strike Libya,” he told a gathering of supporters at his Bab al-Azizia fortified compound in central Tripoli.
“Strike Libya?” he asked. “We’ll be the one who strikes you! We struck you in Algeria, in Vietnam. You want to strike us? Come and give it a try.”
In an interview with the Italian daily Il Giornale published on Tuesday, Qaddafi said that if Western forces attacked Libya, he would ally with al-Qaeda “and declare holy war.”
The rebels’ position looked highly vulnerable after government troops took control of the junction at Ajdabiyah, opening the way to Benghazi.
NATO has set three conditions for it to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya: regional support, proof its help is needed and a Security Council resolution.
An Arab League call for a no-fly zone satisfies the first condition, but with access to most of Libya barred by Qaddafi’s security forces, hard evidence that NATO intervention is needed to avert atrocities or a humanitarian disaster is scarce.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing