Advancing Qaddafi Forces Offer Amnesty To Rebels
The New York Times reports:
AJDABIYA, Libya — Military forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi cranked up military and psychological pressure on the rebels on Monday, offering amnesty to those who surrendered their weapons but bombing a strategic linchpin in the east and invading a rebel-held town in the west.
Government warplanes launched fresh strikes against this anxious town on the doorstep of the opposition capital, Benghazi, and almost abreast of a highway crucial to recapturing the eastern border and encircling the rebels with heavy armor and artillery.
Residents of Zuwarah, an isolated city near the Tunisian border in the west, told Reuters that the pro-Qaddafi forces that surrounded them three days before had taken control. “Zuwarah is in their hands now,” said one resident, Tarek Abdallah. “They control it and there is no sign of the rebels. They are now in the center — the army and the tanks.”
The developments came against a background of quickening diplomatic debate over possible outside help for the Libyan rebels, who have made increasingly anxious pleas for intervention that have, so far, produced none. TheUnited Nations Security Council took up the contentious question of a no-flight zone on Monday, but no decision was reached.
In recent days, the rebels have asserted that the retreat of their forces is a tactical choice rather than a desperate measure, and that they are reorganizing to inject more experienced fighters into the ranks. At the same time, their unrelenting calls for the no-flight zone — at news conferences, on banners and even in the face paint of protesters — have made clear that the rebel leadership holds out little hope of its ragtag army defeating the colonel’s loyalists on its own.
In a welcome turn for the rebels, who have asked for military assistance, including airstrikes, from Western powers, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with unnamed opposition leaders in a Paris hotel room after a meeting of the foreign ministers of the countries in the Group of 8 — the first such high-level meeting.
In Benghazi, the vice chairman of the interim opposition ruling council, Abdul Hafidh Ghoga, said a rebel representative would use the meeting with Mrs. Clinton to demand quicker intervention. Inaction, Mr. Ghoga warned, “would have negative results on our future relations with the West.”
Apparently seeking to undermine the rebels’ determination to continue their fight, government authorities on Monday repeated an offer of amnesty for combatants who give up their weapons, Reuters said, quoting state television. The response was not immediately clear.
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