Qaddafi's Son Declares Offensive as Libyan Rebels Flee Oil Hub Ras Lanuf

Libyan rebels under fire fled a key oil hub on the Mediterranean coast, as Muammar Qaddafi’s son said government forces are mounting a full-scale attack and Western countries will lose if they support the uprising.
Saif al-Islam, who has become a spokesman for his father, said the government will never surrender to the rebels and that the offensive is starting now.
“This is our country. We fight here in Libya, we die here in Libya,” he said at a press conference broadcast on Sky television. “The Libyan people will never ever welcome NATO, they will never ever welcome the Americans.”
Oil futures, which had risen to a 2 1/2-year high on the conflict in Libya, pared early losses today following an Associated Press report that Saudi Arabian police opened fire to disperse protesters in the eastern city of al-Qatif. Crude oil for April delivery declined $1.94 to $102.44 a barrel at 3:44 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil traded at about $101.50 before reports of the gunfire.
Libyan Rebels in Ras Lanuf retreated today under air and artillery fire from Qaddafi’s forces, Al-Jazeera showed in a broadcast from the coastal city that is home to Libyan Emirates Oil Refinery Co. Black smoke billowed from an oil depot nearby.
In Washington, the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Army Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, said the momentum in the fighting, initially with the rebels, has shifted to Qaddafi’s forces. The U.S. director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said Qaddafi “will prevail” if the fighting goes on for a longer time.
“Local doctors have seen a sharp increase in the number of casualties arriving at hospitals,” International Committee of the Red Cross President Jakob Kellenberger said today in a statement from Geneva. Twenty-two people have died and 40 have been treated for wounds in the western city of Misrata and Red Cross doctors have operated on another 55 casualties in the northeastern town of Ajdabiya, he said.
Diplomatic Recognition
The rebels’ setback occurred as their leaders won French diplomatic recognition for the Interim Transitional National Council in a meeting in Paris with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who plans to send an ambassador to the opposition stronghold of Benghazi. Libya may suspend ties with France, state television reported after the announcement.
The rebels also were promised a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton next week when she visits France, Egypt and Tunisia.
Sarkozy may propose to European leaders at a summit tomorrow that Qaddafi installations be bombed, Agence France- Presse reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the plans. Targets could include command centers in Tripoli and military bases to the east and south, the agency said.

Casualties

More than 400 people have been killed and 2,000 wounded in fighting in eastern Libya since Feb. 17, a member of the insurgents’ provisional health committee told reporters yesterday in Benghazi. The official, Gebril Hewadi, said the dead include 350 civilians and 50 rebel fighters, according to regional hospitals. The number of people missing is still unknown, he said.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers sought to overcome differences about establishing a no-fly zone when they met today in Brussels. While countries such as the U.K. and France have urged NATO allies to consider the proposal, which would prevent Qaddafi’s forces from mounting air attacks on the rebels, the U.S. has been less enthusiastic, and Germany and other nations have expressed concern about the consequences.
“We don’t want to get sucked into a war in North Africa,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told reporters in Brussels before a meeting of European Union foreign ministers.

Legal Basis

NATO needs a legal basis from the United Nations and the backing of Arab states before it could impose any no-fly zone, alliance Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters in Brussels.
Libya’s air defense system is “quite substantial” and is the second largest in the Middle East, Clapper said today in Washington before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said Qaddafi’s forces have a logistical advantage over the rebels.
Burgess told the committee that the fighting has “reached a state of equilibrium where the initiative, if you will, may actually be on the regime side at this time.”
Sen. Joe Lieberman said in response that survival of Qaddafi’s regime “would be a very bad outcome.” The U.S. might help the rebels with such measures as a no-fly zone, jamming regime communications, giving intelligence to the rebels and “perhaps supplying them with weapons,” he said.

Somalia Scenario

Clapper said other possible outcomes include something like the “pre-Qaddafi, pre-king history of Libya” in which there are three semi-autonomous mini-states -- one based around Tripoli, one around rebel-controlled Benghazi and one in other tribal areas. “Or you could end up with a Somalia-like situation,” he added.
Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, said the U.S. has an interest not only in the humanitarian crisis in Libya but also “we don’t want it to end up as a base like Somalia for anti- American Islamist terrorism.” He called for the Obama administration to follow France in recognizing the rebel’s opposition government.
Qaddafi’s son said Libya was freeing three Dutch marines who had been captured during an evacuation mission near the coastal city of Sirte last month.“We are sending them back home but we are still keeping their helicopter,” he said.

Oil Facilities

Mustafa Gheriani, media coordinator for the rebels in Benghazi, said yesterday that Qaddafi’s forces fired missiles against the oil pipeline that goes to Gulf of Sidra and against the Ras Lanuf port.
Ras Lanuf has a tanker terminal that has exported 200,000 barrels a day, as well as Libya’s biggest refinery, with a capacity of 220,000 barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency. The Sidra terminal exported 450,000 barrels a day as recently as January, according to the IEA. Together, the two ports account for 43 percent of exports in January, according to the IEA.
The Ras Lanuf refinery was shut and its employees fled because of the fighting, an official from the Libyan Emirates Oil Refining Co. said yesterday. He spoke before reports of a raid on the facility and calls to his office later weren’t answered.
The oil tanker Frankopan departed empty from Brega, another port on the Gulf of Sidra close to the center of the conflict, because there was no crude to collect, said Dragan Gacina, marketing manager at Zadar, Croatia-based Tankerska Plovidba, the vessel’s owner, by phone today.

Journalists Barred

Qaddafi’s government took Western journalists late yesterday to a stadium on the outskirts of Zawiyah where regime supporters waved flags amid fireworks, the AP said. Authorities refused to let the journalists visit the central square where insurgents had been resisting Qaddafi’s forces seeking to regain control of the town, the AP said. Zawiyah was the closest city to the capital, Tripoli, to fall under rebel control.
The EU, U.S. and other countries have frozen the assets of Qaddafi and his associates held outside Libya. Germany has frozen Libyan bank assets worth “billions,” Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle said today. The EU is “in the process” of widening sanctions to include organizations controlled by Qaddafi as well as individuals, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said yesterday.

Regional Turmoil

The Libyan uprising followed popular protest movements that ousted Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. There have also been anti-government demonstrations across the region.
Yemeni protesters today rejected a plan announced by President Ali Abdullah Saleh for a new constitution leading to an elected government, and insisted the president should quit immediately.
In Saudi Arabia, where protests are prohibited, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal called yesterday for “dialogue” to deal with the complaints of the Shiite minority, who mostly live in the oil-rich eastern part of the kingdom.
Gulf Cooperation Council countries, including Saudi Arabia, agreed to set up a fund worth more than $10 billion to help two of the group’s six members, Oman and Bahrain, Kuwait’s Foreign minister Sheikh Mohammad Al-Sabah said. In both countries, demonstrators calling for more democracy and higher living standards have been killed in clashes with security forces.