Another Gadhafi regime official defects

BOUAZZA BEN BOUAZZA

DIAA HADID

Asso­ci­ated Press

TRIPOLI, Libya — Another high-ranking Libyan offi­cial has defected and fled the coun­try amid a widen­ing NATO cam­paign of bomb­ings as well as leaflet­ting and other psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare to per­suade Moam­mar Gadhafi’s troops to stop fighting.

Shukri Ghanem, the Libyan oil min­is­ter and head of the National Oil Co., crossed into neigh­bor­ing Tunisia by road on Mon­day, accord­ing to a Tunisian secu­rity offi­cial and Abdel Mon­eim al-Houni, a for­mer Libyan Arab League rep­re­sen­ta­tive who was among the first wave of Libyan diplo­mats to defect.

The defec­tions sug­gest Gadhafi’s polit­i­cal struc­ture is fray­ing, but it’s unclear whether there is enough inter­nal strife to seri­ously under­mine his abil­ity to fight rebel forces as NATO airstrike pound Libyan mil­i­tary tar­gets. Gad­hafi appears to retain the back­ing of his core of mil­i­tary commanders.

Still, sup­port for Gad­hafi seems to be wan­ing in the cap­i­tal, Tripoli. Pro-regime demon­stra­tions are sparsely attended, even when heav­ily adver­tised in advance.

And rebel forces have reported some gains in recent days. In Mis­rata, the main bat­tle­ground in west­ern Libya, oppo­si­tion fight­ers claim they have dri­ven back gov­ern­ment troops from key access points and tried to push pro-Gadhafi gun­ners out of rocket range for the city.

NATO said Tues­day it would step up psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare oper­a­tions to try to per­suade troops loyal to Gad­hafi to aban­don the fight.

Wing Cmdr. Mike Bracken, speak­ing in Naples, Italy, said NATO planes have been drop­ping leaflets and broad­cast­ing mes­sages to Libyan forces urg­ing them “to return to their bar­racks and homes.”

Bracken said the mes­sages also have advised pro-regime troops “to move away from any mil­i­tary equip­ment” that could be tar­geted by NATO’s strike aircraft.

He did not pro­vide fur­ther details on the psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions. But the U.S. has been using a spe­cially mod­i­fied air force C-130 trans­port to broad­cast mes­sages to Libyan forces in AM, FM, high-frequency radio, TV and mil­i­tary com­mu­ni­ca­tions bands.

NATO is oper­at­ing under a U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil man­date to main­tain a no-fly zone and to take other actions to pro­tect civil­ians from attack by Gadhafi’s forces. In recent days, NATO attacks have con­cen­trated on mil­i­tary and logis­tics hubs in Tripoli.

On Mon­day night, British air­craft bombed the intel­li­gence agency build­ing in the cap­i­tal as well as a train­ing base for body­guards pro­tect­ing mem­bers of Gadhafi’s regime, accord­ing to Britain’s Min­istry of Defense.

Maj. Gen. John Lorimer said the tar­gets were “at the heart of the appa­ra­tus used by the regime to bru­tal­ize the civil­ian population.”

One of the build­ings hit overnight was used by the Inte­rior Min­istry, which is respon­si­ble for inter­nal secu­rity. Another build­ing belong­ing to an anti-corruption com­mis­sion was also bombed. Libyan gov­ern­ment spokesman Moussa Ibrahim sug­gested that the min­istry was tar­geted because it con­tained files on cor­rup­tion cases against senior mem­bers of the Benghazi-based rebel leadership.

The Inter­na­tional Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross said Tues­day that fight­ing in Mis­rata and other cities is deny­ing med­ical aid to civil­ians and caus­ing casu­al­ties among health per­son­nel. It cited reports by the Libyan Red Cres­cent that three of its ambu­lances were hit over the past four days. A nurse was killed and a patient and three vol­un­teers were wounded, it said.

Gad­hafi, who has ruled Libya for more than 40 years, has been using his mil­i­tary and mili­tias to try to put down an upris­ing that began in Feb­ru­ary. The protests are aimed at oust­ing him from power.

Although Gad­hafi appears from time to time on state-run tele­vi­sion and radio, his where­abouts are a mystery.

“We do not know where Gad­hafi is,” said Ital­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Franco Fat­tini, meet­ing Tues­day in Rome with Nabil Elaraby, the new secretary-general of the Arab League. “We heard some rumors about Gad­hafi leav­ing Tripoli, tak­ing refuge out­side of the city, but we had no con­fir­ma­tion at all.”

Gov­ern­ment offi­cials were not imme­di­ately avail­able to com­ment on the oil minister’s defec­tion. Ghanem is one of the most promi­nent mem­bers of Gadhafi’s gov­ern­ment to aban­don the regime.

Oth­ers who have defected include For­eign Min­is­ter Moussa Koussa, one of Gadhafi’s ear­li­est sup­port­ers; Inte­rior Min­is­ter Abdel-Fatah Younes; Jus­tice Min­is­ter Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, and Ali Abdessalam Treki, a for­mer U.N. Gen­eral Assem­bly pres­i­dent. A num­ber of ambas­sadors and other diplo­mats also have resigned.

Ghanem had been at odds with the Gad­hafi regime, los­ing his post for a while in 2009 as two of Gadhafi’s sons dif­fered over the direc­tion the coun­try should take in reform­ing its polit­i­cal and eco­nomic sys­tems. His res­ig­na­tion was seen, at least in part, as linked to the cre­ation of a new super­struc­ture gov­ern­ing the nation’s oil sec­tor, with the new agency designed to replace one he supported.

He pre­vi­ously served as prime min­is­ter for about three years at a time when Libya was emerg­ing from under the cloud of more than a decade of inter­na­tional sanctions.

Also Tues­day, the U.N. refugee agency said Libyan author­i­ties appeared to be encour­ag­ing African migrants to board unsea­wor­thy boats bound for Europe.

Melissa Flem­ing, a spokes­woman for the U.N. High Com­mis­sioner for Refugees, told reporters in Geneva that the Libyan con­flict has opened up a route for migrants that was closed for two years because of an agree­ment between Libya and Italy.

Already some 14,000 peo­ple — mostly from sub-Saharan Africa — have used Libya as a spring­board to reach Europe, and thou­sands more are poised to make the treach­er­ous sea jour­ney in the com­ing weeks as weather con­di­tions in the Mediter­ranean improve.

“The author­i­ties (in Libya) are not dis­cour­ag­ing, at all, in fact there may be signs that they are encour­ag­ing these boat jour­neys,” she said.

Some are migrants flee­ing the fight­ing in Libya, but oth­ers appear to be cross­ing into Libya from else­where in Africa because it is eas­ier to get onto smug­glers’ boats there.

Mean­while, Libyan gov­ern­ment spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said four jour­nal­ists detained since early April have com­pleted an admin­is­tra­tive hear­ing and will be released Tues­day or Wednesday.

He gave their names as James Foley, who had been cov­er­ing the con­flict in Libya for the Boston-based news agency Glob­al­Post, and Clare Mor­gana Gillis, a free­lance jour­nal­ist who wrote for The Atlantic and USA Today.

He also named Manu Brabo, a Span­ish jour­nal­ist picked up with Foley and Gillis on April 5 near the town of Brega.

It was not imme­di­ately clear who the fourth jour­nal­ist was. Pho­to­jour­nal­ist Anton Ham­merl, who has South African and Aus­trian cit­i­zen­ships, went miss­ing in Libya about the time the oth­ers were detained.

Jane Gillis of New Haven, Con­necti­cut, said Tues­day that she had not heard any­thing about her daughter’s release beyond news reports. She said there had been many ups and downs in the case and she was hold­ing off on any celebration.

“It’s not really a done deal until they’re out,” she said. “We’re very hope­ful, but we’re still wait­ing and hope that all the news sto­ries are true.”

Posted by AP News on May 17 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.