Gettin' while the gettin's good

David Kirkpatrick and John Burns have an article in The New York Times about Libya and its defectors:

A senior aide to one of Colonrl Muammar el-Qaddafi’s sons has held secret talks in London with British authorities, a friend of the aide said, as his government dismissed rebel talk of a cease-fire as a thinly veiled invitation to surrender. The London talks were led by Mohamed Ismail, a senior aide to Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, a British-educated son of Colonel Qaddafi and the colonel’s heir apparent. Mr. Ismail’s trip came just days after the flight to London of one of the colonel’s closest allies, Moussa Koussa, sent tremors of anxiety through the Qaddafi government.
A friend of Mr. Ismail’s, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, said the aide was on an official mission, and British officials said that, after several days in London, he had already returned to Tripoli.
But the exact timing and purpose of Mr. Ismail’s mission was not divulged, and the mystery surrounding his trip added to a sense of tension and uncertainty in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, after two weeks of Western airstrikes intended to protect rebel-held territory and pressure the Qaddafi government.
Bursts of gunfire broke out before dawn in the streets near Colonel Qaddafi’s compound, and two witnesses said they saw “pools of blood” on the ground, but the cause of the firefight could not be determined. The Qaddafi government has been distributing weapons to many Libyan citizens for use in their own defense, and its armed militia and plainclothes police are omnipresent in Tripoli.
The Qaddafi forces also easily dispersed a renewed rebel attempt to advance along the eastern coast, while continuing their shelling of the rebel-held city of Misurata in the west. Residents speaking by telephone said government forces fired tank and artillery shells at an industrial district near the city’s port, apparently in an attempt to shut it down, destroying storehouses of food in the process.
Western warships had recently opened the port by chasing away Libyan coast guard vessels, and the arrival of the first-aid shipments promised to make it a lifeline for the besieged city.
Speaking from the Misurata hospital, a rebel spokesman said that one resident was killed and four were wounded that day and twenty the day before. “Please, scream for Misurata!” said the spokesman, Mohamed, whose last name was withheld for the protection of his family. “We are going under!”
A reporter for CNN entered the city by boat and described the main remaining hospital as “short of everything” and “overwhelmed”. The reporter said doctors were performing surgery in the hallways, against the constant sound of gunfire from government tanks, artillery, and mortars.
Apparently responding to the reports of high-level defections and Mr. Ismail’s London talks, the leaders of the rebels trying to oust Colonel Qaddafi issued a set of demands for a cease-fire. At a news conference in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, Mustapha Abdul Jalil, the leader of the rebel National Council, demanded that Colonel Qaddafi’s forces lift their sieges of rebel-held cities like Misurata and Zintan, remove gunmen placed on rooftops, and guarantee the right of Libyans to hold peaceful protests in the western half of the country. “At that point, we’ll see how all the Libyan people want freedom,” Mr. Abdul Jalil said. Asked about the possibility that a cease-fire could lead to a divided country, with Colonel Qaddafi controlling the west and the rebels the east, Mr. Abdul Jalil said, “It’s not possible. Qaddafi and his family need to leave,” he said. “It’s nonnegotiable.”
The Qaddafi government dismissed the statement as a ploy. “The rebels never offered any peace,” said the government’s spokesman, Musa Ibrahim. “You are not offering peace if you are making impossible demands. It is a trick. I could come to the rebels and say: ‘I offer you peace. Get out of Benghazi on a ship!’ ” he added. “You can’t do that.”
Another high ranking government official who departed in Mr. Koussa’s wake also offered some new clarification about his thinking. The official, Ali Abdussalam el-Treki, a former foreign minister and longtime aide to Colonel Qaddafi, was reported to have defected when a family member issued a statement saying that he had quit the government and left for Egypt. In an interview in Cairo, Mr. Treki confirmed that he had left his job and the country, and said that resolving the conflict would require Libya’s becoming a democracy. But he did not call himself a defector. “There are people who do not want to defect to one side or the other,” he said. “They just don’t want to be part of this situation continuing. A lot of Libyans think like me. They think our country should be saved. We have to stop this killing and fighting. All fighting should be stopped.” Although he said he did not want to criticize Colonel Qaddafi, Mr. Treki added that any resolution would require that the Libyan leader, and his sons, give up power to make way for a transition to democracy under United Nations auspices.
Although it was unclear what potential resolution to the fighting Mr. Ismail might have broached in London, if any, a Libyan Foreign Ministry official suggested in a private conversation earlier this week that the conflict would end with negotiations between the Qaddafi government and Western powers. Speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, the official brushed off a suggestion that Colonel Qaddafi might leave, or that he might strike a deal with the rebels. Both appear to be priorities for the West, where the battle for Libya is widely viewed as an internal conflict pitting a domestic democracy movement against a longstanding tyrant.
A British official familiar with the talks with Mr. Ismail said that the British government had not offered any deals, either over the terms for a cease-fire or over possible sanctuary for further Libyan defectors. “Our people are not in the game of making deals,” the official said. “We tell them quite forcefully that Qaddafi has to go, and that there is a need for regime change.” He added, “Our view is that the writing is on the wall for the regime, and it’s only a question of how long it’s going to take.”
Mr. Ismail’s employer, Seif el-Islam el-Qaddafi, had been known as a voice for reform in Libya before he joined his father in vowing to crack down on the rebels. Both men have close ties to Britain. Both were also involved, along with Mr. Koussa, in lengthy talks with Britain over Libya’s abandonment of its unconventional weapons program and reconciliation with the West.
While Mr. Ismail had returned to Tripoli, British officials said, Mr. Koussa remained sequestered at a safe house outside London where he was being debriefed by officials from the Foreign Office and MI6, Britain’s secret intelligence agency. Prosecutors in Scotland said they had filed a formal request with the Foreign Office in London for the Scottish police to question Mr. Koussa on the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which Mr. Koussa is believed to have helped plan. British officials have frequently stressed that no defector will be granted immunity from prosecution. At a news conference, Prime Minister David Cameron referred to the defection of Mr. Koussa as “a compelling story of the desperation and the fear at the very top of the crumbling and rotten Qaddafi regime”.
If there was a direct threat to the government, however, it did not appear to come from an imminent rebel advance. Hundreds of rebels massed about fifteen miles east of the oil port of Brega, trying to regroup after a chaotic withdrawal earlier in the week. They brought heavier weapons, including multiple rocket launchers, and a group of rebels launched a barrage of rockets toward Brega. It was unclear what, if anything, they struck.
In the afternoon, the pro-Qaddafi forces sent an artillery salvo toward the rebels that sent them scurrying a few miles to safety. Rounds exploded near and beside the retreating column as it made its way north, ending the day much as it had begun, with Brega in the possession of Colonel Qaddafi’s forces and the rebels holding most of the road to the east, and both sides in position to try again soon.
In Tripoli, some residents noted the growing presence of guns in the streets after the government’s announced plans to arm civilians. In some areas outside the capital considered loyal to Colonel Qaddafi, Kalashnikov rifles now seem “as common as mobile phones,” as one Libyan put it.