Tripoli, April 06: A fierce offensive by government troops pushed Libyan rebels attempting to take the key oil town of Brega further east, as diplomatic moves to end the over month-long conflict made little headway with the regime stating that it was open to negotiate all reforms except Muammar Gaddafi’s exit.Coming under intense and renewed bombardment outside Brega, a part of which the rebels had taken over yesterday, they abandoned the town and were heading towards the eastern city of Ajdabiya, Al Jazeera reported.Heavy fighting was reported today and opposition forces said they came under rocket and artillery fire as they attempted to fight back with mortars and rockets of their own.
The control of the oil town is vital as the capture of the oil pipeline terminus, small refinery and Mediterranean port could boost the opposition hunt for revenues.The developments came as a NATO official claimed that 30 per cent of Libya’s military capacity had been destroyed as a result of the international strikes on Gaddafi’s assets.Brig Gen Mark Van Uhm said that “we have taken out 30 per cent of the military capacity of the pro-Gadhafi forces.” On the ground, however, the rebels painted a gloomy picture of their advance and lamented the unmatched military capacity of the two sides.”When you see this, the situation is very bad. We cannot match their weapons,” Kamal Mughrabi, 64, a retired soldier who joined the opposition army was quoted as saying as the opposition was pushed back almost 20-30 km east of Brega.Early in the day, a coalition airstrike targeted eight government vehicles that were advancing on opposition positions, rebel officer Abdel-Basset Abibi said.
In first concrete comments from the beleaguered regime whose forces have been hit relentlessly by Western missiles and air strikes for weeks, Gaddafi’s spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said that everything except the exit of the Libyan leader was negotiable.
“The kind of political system which can be implemented in the country is negotiable. We can talk about it,” he told reporters in the capital.In a calibrated move, the US decided to drop financial sanctions against Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa who defected to Britain last week hoping other aides of Gaddafi would follow suit.White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in Washington that the US administration is in the process of identifying more people close to the authoritarian ruler to target them with sanctions.Van Uhm, meanwhile, said that NATO’s “number one priority” now was the western town of Misurata, where residents have been besieged by pro-Gaddafi troops for weeks.He said in Misurata human beings were being used as shields in order to prevent NATO sorties to identify targets.Meanwhile, the Libyan rebels were set to begin exporting their first shipments of oil since mid-March after a tanker capable of holding USD 100 million worth of crude docked at the eastern port of Tobruk.
——–PTI