NATO is increasing the speed of its airstrikes against Muammar Qaddafi’s fielded forces and the proximity of its attacks to the Libyan dictator in an effort to break a stalemate in the military situation, according to military officials.
NATO has received the further firepower it has sought with the addition of Italian ground-attack warplanes and armed U.S. Predator drones intended to increase pressure on Qaddafi and his loyalists to stop attacking civilians in rebel-held areas.
Pro-regime fighters have withdrawn from rebel-held Misrata while continuing daily shelling of the besieged city. Qaddafi’s forces launched a constant bombardment yesterday afternoon and evening against the vital port area, where hundreds of people were gathered awaiting an evacuation ship, the Associated Press reported.
U.K. Defense Secretary Liam Fox said that the NATO strike on April 25 that flattened buildings in Qaddafi’s main compound was meant to do more than knock out what NATO said was a communications bunker.
Attacks in Tripoli are intended to “increase the psychological pressure, apart from anything else, on Qaddafi, to make him realize that this is something that he is involved in,” Fox said during an appearance on PBS’s “NewsHour” program following discussions about Libya with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. “And I think that’s very important in terms of the pressure we can bring on the regime itself.”
‘Legitimate Targets’
Earlier yesterday, standing alongside Fox at the Pentagon, Gates countered Libya’s assertion that the strike on the Bab al- Aziziya compound was intended to kill Qaddafi. His comments made clear that centers from which Qaddafi commands his forces are “legitimate targets,” possibly putting him at risk.
“We are not targeting him specifically, but we do consider command-and-control targets legitimate targets, wherever we find them,” Gates said.
Qaddafi’s regime has weathered an uprising for more than two months, holding onto the capital, Tripoli, as rebels control much of the oil-rich east. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin repeated his criticism of the NATO effort in Libya, saying the air campaign is destroying the nation’s infrastructure and going beyond the United Nations mandate to protect civilians.
“Libya’s oil reserves, by the way, are the biggest in Africa and its gas reserves are ranked fourth-biggest in Africa,” Putin told reporters in Copenhagen. “This begs the question of whether they are the main object of interest for those operating there today.”
The conflict in Libya has pushed crude oil prices to the highest since September 2008, and they have gained more than 30 percent since mid-February. Futures fluctuated yesterday, with oil for June delivery falling 7 cents to settle at $112.21 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Predator Power
In Washington, Fox said the addition of the Predators, armed with Hellfire missiles, provides NATO with an improved capability to respond to attacks on civilians.
“That’s given us a shorter gap between the identification of targets and striking the targets, rather than the traditional airpower that we’ve been using,” he said on PBS. “So that’s been an advance for us.”
In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Italian Air Force jets would join in attacking Qaddafi’s forces.
“The decision by our government hasn’t been an easy one,” he said, describing pressure from U.S. President Barack Obama, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to join the mission to “speed up a resolution of the Libyan problem.”
Strike Missions
Previously, Italy had limited itself to providing military support, citing its history as Libya’s former colonial ruler. Italy also has had extensive business ties to Libya, including natural gas delivered by pipeline.
Coalition jets flew 56 “strike” missions to identify and engage possible targets on April 25, NATO said. Targets included tanks, rocket launchers and ammunition depots near Tripoli, Misrata and Sirte.
Libyan state television said NATO jets hit civilian and military sites in three districts in the Libyan capital as well as a fiber-optic cable connecting the Qaddafi stronghold of Sirte with the oil ports of Ras Lanuf and Brega to the east, the BBC reported.
‘Desperate and Weak’
“We have seen significant progress made in the last 72 hours with Qaddafi’s forces losing their grip on Misrata, and we have received reports of under-age soldiers and foreign mercenaries being captured -- this underlines the regime’s inability to rely on its own security forces,” Fox said in an e-mailed statement after his talks with Gates. “These are the tactics of an increasingly desperate and weak regime.”
The Libyan government called the NATO strike on a Qaddafi compound an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
“This is not about individuals. This is not about regime change. This is about bringing an end to the violence,” General Charles Bouchard, the Canadian Air Force officer commanding the Libya operation, told reporters via video link from his command center in the southern Italian city of Naples.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague rejected assertions by lawmakers that a stalemate had emerged, given the standoff between Qaddafi loyalists and rebels in the area between Brega and Ajdabiya in western Libya.
“It has not settled into what one would call a long-term stalemate,” Hague told the House of Commons in London yesterday. He said the overall situation remained “very fluid.”
Moussa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Libyan government, said that Qaddafi was “healthy and well” after the strike on his compound. Libyan television later showed Qaddafi receiving local leaders while sitting in a tent, with a television displaying the date.
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