French fighter aircraft have destroyed five Libyan air force planes and two helicopters in an attack on the forces of Col Muammar Gaddafi.

A French spokesman said the aircraft were caught on the ground at Misrata air base preparing to launch attacks in the area of the rebel-held town.

France is one of the coalition countries enforcing a UN no-fly zone aimed at protecting civilians.

Rebels have captured the eastern town of Ajdabiya and have pushed westwards.

Libyan TV reported more air strikes overnight at Sabha in central Libya.

Libyan state television said military and civilian areas had been hit, but there was no independent confirmation.

The TV also said there had been air strikes near Col Gaddafi's power base of Sirte, on the Mediterranean coast east of Tripoli.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12873105

The last time the rebels made it as far west as Bin Jawad, it ended in disaster: their fighters ran into a murderous ambush, lost 70 men, and were forced into a terrifying retreat that nearly ended their campaign.

But yesterday, after a stunning sweep across the territory for which they have fought so hard and for so long, they were back.

This time, with Western air power destroying almost all that is left of the regime's armour and artillery, the mood was very different. The rebels' eyes were cast towards Sirte, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's birthplace and the centre of loyalist resistance.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/one-by-one-the-milestones-on-the-road-to-tripoli-are-falling-2254748.html

Libyan rebels say they have signed an oil contract with Qatar to export oil from rebel-held territory.

"We are producing about 100,000 to 130,000 barrels a day, we can easily up that to about 300,000 a day," rebel spokesman Ali Tarhouni told the Associated Press.

He said that shipments of crude would start in "less than a week".

The rebels say their main concern is obtaining insurance for any tankers taking oil from Libya.

Libya produces 1.6m barrels per day of oil but analysts believe this has fallen by at least two-thirds since unrest began last month.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12875810

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Oil retreated on Monday with Brent slipping to around $115 after Libyan rebels regained control of key oil towns, and unrest over the weekend was limited to minor crude exporters Syria and Yemen.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/42298553?__source=RSS*tag*&par=RSS

Tonight, in a speech that probably should have been delivered before American planes began flying missions over North Africa, Barack Obama will try to explain to a puzzled nation why we are at war with Libya.

Not that the word “war” will pass his lips, most likely. In press briefings last week, our Libyan campaign was euphemized into a “kinetic military action” and a “time-limited, scope-limited military action.” (The online parodies were merciless: “Make love, not time-limited, scope-limited military actions!” “Let slip the muzzled canine unit of kinetic military action!”) Advertising tonight’s address, the White House opted for “the situation in Libya,” which sounds less like a military intervention than a spin-off vehicle for the famous musclehead from MTV’s “Jersey Shore.”

But by any name or euphemism, the United States has gone to war, and there are questions that the president must answer. Here are the four biggest ones:

What are our military objectives? The strict letter of the United Nations resolution we’re enforcing only authorizes the use of air power to protect civilian populations “under threat of attack” from Qaddafi’s forces. But we’re interpreting that mandate as liberally as possible: our strikes have cleared the way for a rebel counteroffensive, whose success is contingent on our continued air support.

If the rebels stall out short of Tripoli, though, how will we respond? With a permanent no-fly zone, effectively establishing a NATO protectorate in eastern Libya? With arms for the anti-Qaddafi forces, so they can finish the job? Either way, the logic of this conflict suggests a more open-ended commitment than the White House has been willing to admit.

Who exactly are the rebels? According to our ambassador to Libya, they have issued policy statements that include “all the right elements” — support for democracy, economic development, women’s rights, etc. According to The Los Angeles Times, they have filled what used to be Qaddafi’s prisons with “enemies of the revolution” — mostly black Africans, rounded up under suspicion of being mercenaries and awaiting revolutionary justice. According to The Daily Telegraph in London, their front-line forces include what one rebel commander calls the “patriots and good Muslims” who fought American forces in Iraq.

Perhaps Obama can clarify this picture. The rebels don’t need to be saints to represent an improvement on Qaddafi. But given that we’re dropping bombs on their behalf, it would be nice if they didn’t turn out to be Jacobins or Islamists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/opinion/28douthat.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

see toon at top...

NATO's political mission "should swiftly identify and nurture a national opposition and plot the path for a post-conflict transition to democracy, probably under UN auspices", or so advises the Financial Times in its lead editorial, "Plotting the Way Forward".

Both the title and the advice are borrowed from a past era: the post-Afghanistan invasion strategy that plotted the nurturing, financing, and supporting of Hamid Karzai's - the former US corporate oil executive - bid for the presidency.

Or another throwback: pre- and post-invasion of Iraq, when London and Washington plotted their invasion as they prepared the Iraq National Congress to hopefully replace Saddam's regime.

Except that this FT editorial comes a decade later and proposes the same plan as the way forward in Libya! Where NATO powers are exploiting their military role to define, or at least influence, the post-Gaddafi alternative.

Too much of a sense of deja vu? Or the recurring nightmare of predictable Western political interference that follows military intervention using whichever pretext is available; be it 'war on terror', 'weapons of mass destruction', or 'humanitarian intervention'? 

The Libyan National Council, transitional

Fortunately, the Council wasn't made-in-the-USA or manufactured by another foreign power. Rather it came into existence, a month ago, at Libyans' own initiative, soon after the winds of revolutionary change blew Libya's way, and after its people rose to the occasion with pride and courage.

Most of the 31 council members are unknown to the media. And the few with a mandate to attain Western and international recognition have used all contacts from their previous official roles or grabbed onto Western overtures through whatever channels possible, even unsavoury French connections, to get it. 

Sources close to the council claim Western powers have opened channels of communications not in return for future Libyan concessions but rather out of concern that they would be left out of post-Gaddafi Libya and its economic opportunities.

And unlike some of the Libyan diplomats who jumped ship all too recently, and who shifted their position from loyalty to Gaddafi to passionate proponents of Western ground military intervention, the Transitional Council has insisted on a limited UN authorized intervention.

Indeed, the council insists that the Libyan people could stand up to Gaddafi on their own provided the playing field/battlefield has been levelled with the Gaddafi's militias, either by providing them with arms or neutralising the regime's heavy weaponry. 

Once again, the aspirations of people on the ground, ie. the Arabs, seem to count for little in Washington, Paris and London as they debate how far to go with their intervention.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/2011/03/2011328194855872276.html

Dozens of African migrants were left to die in the Mediterranean after a number of European and Nato military units apparently ignored their cries for help, the Guardian has learned.

A boat carrying 72 passengers, including several women, young children and political refugees, ran into trouble in late March after leaving Tripoli for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Despite alarms being raised with the Italian coastguard and the boat making contact with a military helicopter and a Nato warship, no rescue effort was attempted.

All but 11 of those on board died from thirst and hunger after their vessel was left to drift in open waters for 16 days. "Every morning we would wake up and find more bodies, which we would leave for 24 hours and then throw overboard," said Abu Kurke, one of only nine survivors. "By the final days, we didn't know ourselves … everyone was either praying, or dying."

International maritime law compels all vessels, including military units, to answer distress calls from nearby boats and to offer help where possible. Refugee rights campaigners have demanded an investigation into the deaths, while the UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency, has called for stricter co-operation among commercial and military vessels in the Mediterranean in an effort to save human lives.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/08/nato-ship-libyan-migrants

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Barack Obama overruled the advice of administration lawyers in deciding the US could continue participating in the Libya conflict without congressional approval, The New York Times reports.

The White House insists the president did not need congressional approval to authorise US support for Nato's mission, because the military campaign is limited in scope.

Critics argue the action violates a Vietnam War-era law limiting military action without congressional approval to 60 days.

The newspaper report said Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson and acting head of the justice department's Office of Legal Counsel Caroline Krass had advised Mr Obama that the US involvement in the Libya air campaign constituted "hostilities".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13820727

see toon at top...

Nato forces have attacked Libya's oil facilities for the first time in this conflict in an attempt to starve Muammar Gaddafi's army of fuel, as rebels, following fierce clashes, moved to within 50 miles of the capital Tripoli.

The airstrikes on the complex at Brega, one of the countries' biggest petrochemical complexes and port for export, was designed, says Nato, to prevent regime troops from mounting attacks.

Control of Brega and the adjoining city of Ras Lanuf has changed hands several times in the course of the bitter civil war. It is now under the control of the regime, denying the opposition administration based in Benghazi a highly lucrative source of income.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/nato-strikes-at-libyas-oil-in-bid-to-oust-gaddafi-2308962.html

From Robert Fisk

When the Emir of Qatar flew to see President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria early this summer, he had one message to convey: don't help the Gaddafi regime. In other words, don't replace the dictator's Nato-destroyed armour with identical tanks and personnel carriers from the Algerian army. Word has it – meaning very good Arab military sources say – that Mr Bouteflika, almost as much a façade for the military authorities in Algeria as Mr Assad is for the Baath party in Damascus, gave all the necessary promises and then broke them. An awful lot of Gaddafi's Russian-made desert armour appears to be new; it didn't get its spotless shine after rotting in the desert for the past five years.

Qatar's role in the Libyan conflict remains one of the untold stories of the war – there were Qatari flags waved in Martyrs' Square in Tripoli last week – but so does Algeria's. Arabs were not surprised that so many of Gaddafi's family turned up in Algeria this week. For years, the Algerians have supported Gaddafi's independent – albeit crazed – policies because their own history has taught them to never accept orders from abroad. The moment the French – occupiers, colonisers and persecutors of Algeria for 132 years – bombed Libya, the Gaddafi regime's struggle to survive became a re-enactment of the Algerian FLN's 1954-62 battle for freedom against French rule. If the Libyans have been deprived of serious school history books for more than four decades, they know their country's travails all too well. For the Fezzan, the stony deserts and mountains south of the coastal cities, was occupied by French troops long after the Second World War to protect the frontier of Algeria – then still part of the French empire. The arid frontier between Libya and Algeria has been a smugglers' trail for centuries. Carrying the Gaddafi family into exile was not a major military operation.

Indeed, it was typical of the Algerian foreign ministry to announce the presence of the Gaddafi family on Algerian soil. Algerians like to show the West – especially the French – their freedom, the sacred trust of Algerian nationhood, damaged in the Islamist 1990-98 uprising, is not going to be traded for Western favours.

A key summit on Libya, hosted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and UK PM David Cameron, is to begin in Paris.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend, as will China and Russia, which has now recognised the National Transitional Council (NTC) as Libya's legitimate government.

The NTC will call for help on security, rebuilding and preparing for democracy.

But it has still not captured Col Muammar Gaddafi, whose son Saif al-Islam again vowed a fight to the death.

The BBC's Jon Leyne, in Benghazi, says although the Paris meeting will be short and symbolic, it will give the governments who have supported the NTC another chance to show it has a place on the world stage.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14744073