Colonel Gaddafi has promised to die in Libya, but not by his own hand. So long as he lives, the bloodshed will continue. Since Security Council Resolution 1973 calls for the use of "all necessary means" to protect the civilian population, it may soon appear that the means most necessary is the forcible removal of Gaddafi.

Killing the worst man left in the world may seem excusable to some – he funded terrorism ranging from the IRA to Abu Nidal, probably ordered the destruction of Pan Am 103 and a UTA passenger plane, and on one occasion had 1,200 captives massacred in a prison yard. But we have scruples about the death penalty. Is it lawful to kill Gaddafi?

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/geoffrey-robertson-when-tyrannicide-is-the-only-option-2258671.html

On the night of March 21, just 48 hours after the coalition air campaign against Muammar Gaddafi began, an F-15 Eagle crashed in east Libya after suffering what the US military has described as a mechanical failure.

As the plane went down, its pilot and weapons officer ejected, opened their parachutes and drifted through the dark sky into the flat, Mediterranean scrubland around 40km southeast of Benghazi, a port city of nearly 700,000 at the heart of the rebellion against Gaddafi.

They were deep in friendly territory, and with the help of local residents, both would be rescued within hours. The problem: They didn't know it.

Two US warplanes - responding to a call for help from the downed pilot - swooped in and bombed the ground several hundred metres from approaching civilians. According to the Telegraph newspaper, as many as eight residents who came to help were shot by Marines sent to recover the stranded airman after the bombing run.

The reported civilian casualties haven't stirred outrage in Benghazi, where residents are more concerned with the rebels' tenuous advance and news of mass killings in western towns such as Misurata and Zintan.

But Libyans' affection for foreign air strikes depends on their success in routing Gaddafi's troops and saving civilian lives. Another mistake like the F-15 rescue, especially if it leaves dead civilians, could reverse the goodwill evidenced by the cheering crowds who lauded French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Benghazi's main square after his country's jets were the first to hit Gaddafi's armour columns.

"I'm not gonna hold the French flag and kiss it," said Libyan-American Yaseen Kadura, who returned to Benghazi in late February to stay with his extended family. "Because I do know that these countries act in their own interest. But what is the alternative?"

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/03/2011328132420804774.html

Even before Obama landed in Rio, Brazil, as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, joined with China and Germany to abstain from the vote authorising "all necessary measures" against Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.  

Since then, its opposition to the bombing has hardened.  According to the Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), Brazil's foreign ministry – still, for the most part, staffed by the diplomats who charted Lula's foreign policy – recently issued a statement condemning the loss of civilian lives and calling for the start of dialogue.  

Lula himself has endorsed Dilma's critical position on Libya, going further in his condemnation of the intervention: "These invasions only happen because the United Nations is weak," he said. "If we had twenty-first-century representation [in the Security Council], instead of sending a plane to drop bombs, the UN would send its secretary-general to negotiate."  

His remarks were widely interpreted to mean that if Brazil had been a permanent member of the Security Council – a position it has long sought – it would have vetoed the resolution authorising the bombing rather than, as it did, merely abstaining from the vote.  

These comments were the first indication that the ex-president, still enormously popular and influential in Brazil, planned to continue to openly weigh in on his successor’s foreign policy. 

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/201133014435832732.html

France has been covertly arming rebels in the mountains south of Tripoli eyeing a push on the Libyan capital to hasten the demise of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s 41-year regime.

The French military confirmed yesterday that France, a lead player in the Nato alliance tasked with enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya, had air-dropped light weapons and munitions to the rebels earlier this month.

It is the first time that a Nato country has supplied military aid to Libyan rebels directly, and it is likely to anger countries such as Russia and China, which have accused the military alliance of overstepping its original United Nations-backed mandate to protect civilians.

News of the airdrop first emerged yesterday in French newspaper Le Figaro, which, citing a secret intelligence memo and unnamed sources, said that France had delivered heavy arms to the rebels, including anti-tank missiles, equipment that could significantly alter the balance of power between rebels and regime forces fighting just south of the capital.

The newspaper, which said France made the decision without consulting its Nato partners, claimed that the weapons were intended to help rebels push through to the capital, Tripoli, and encourage a popular uprising in the city, which has seen only sporadic opposition to Col. Gaddafi. “If the rebels can get to the outskirts of Tripoli, the capital will take the chance to rise against Gaddafi,” said an official quoted in the report.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/france-secretly-armed-libyas-rebels-for-push-on-tripoli-2304500.html

Russia has strongly criticised France for dropping weapons to Libyan rebels and demanded an explanation from Paris.

"If this is confirmed, it is a very crude violation of UN Security Council resolution 1970," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

The African Union has also criticised the move, saying it risks causing a "Somalia-sation" of Libya.

The French military says it has dropped arms to Berber tribal fighters in the mountains south-west of the capital.

Mr Lavrov said Russia had formally requested information from France about the move, to check that it "corresponds with reality".

Mr Lavrov is due to meet French counterpart Alain Juppe in Moscow on Friday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13979632

From Chris Floyd

In the crinkled, crumpled little walnut that constitutes America's political discourse, the question of Libya has been reduced to the petty, bitter political wranglings over "Benghazi," where American officials were killed in a FUBAR of covert ops and clueless incompetence. (Then again, covert ops and clueless incompetence are the M.O. of American foreign policy in general, so it's hard to see what's particularly 'scandalous' about the Benghazi incident. This deadly combination kills innocent people all over the world on an almost daily basis.)

Indeed, the hyper-partisan focus on Benghazi actually reflects the thoroughly bipartisan nature of America's fubarish foreign policy. We should be having long, heated, intense hearings on the US-NATO military intervention itself -- an illegal and utterly foolish assault which has plunged the country into violent chaos, empowered violent religious extremism and destabilized large swaths of Africa. It sparked violent civil war in Mali, for example; and even the dreaded Boko Haram in Nigeria have acquired copious arms from the flood of weaponry released by Western intervention, as well as funds and training from the extremist groups empowered by (and sometimes directly supported by) the Western powers in the regime change operation.

But we hear nothing of all this. It's just "Benghazi" -- a convenient 'controversy' for all involved, as it save them from any examination of the dirty reality of the intervention and its dirty aftermath. Fortunately, Patrick Cockburn is on the case, with an excellent article in CounterPunch detailing the "slow-motion coup" now being attempted in Libya by an American-backed general, and the larger context around it. The article is worth reading in full, but here are some excerpts:

The image of the Libyan revolution in 2011 was something of a fabrication in which the decisive role of Nato air power was understated. The same may be true of the counter-revolution in Libya that is being ushered in by ex-general Kalifa Hifter’s slow-motion coup which gathered support last week but without making a decisive breakthrough. …

Polarisation is happening throughout the country, but it has some way to go. Hifter’s support is stronger than expected but ramshackle, even if it is in keeping with the mood of much of the country. Thousands joined demonstrations across Libya on Friday in the biggest mass rallies since 2011 in support of Hifter, against the Islamic militias and in favour of the suspension of the Islamist-led parliament. The problem here is that Hifter may be able to tap mass resentment against the militias and in favour of a reconstituted police and national army, but his own Libyan National Army is itself a militia.

A crisis is clearly coming, but the Hifter coup still feels like the first act of a drama which will have more episodes, many of them violent, but without any final winner necessarily emerging. The present situation feels more like Lebanon, with its many power centres and no strong central state, than Egypt or Syria with their tradition of an all-powerful central authority. And in Libya, as in Lebanon during the civil war, it is foreign intervention that is likely to break the stalemate and determine the speed and direction of events as it did in 2011.

Foreign intervention is as likely to precipitate a civil war as prevent one. In Syria it led the opposition to imagine that they could win a military conflict. It is worth keeping in mind that, bad though the situation is in Libya, so far there is nothing like the violence of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan or Lebanon during the civil war. Arbitrary and authoritarian though Gaddafi’s rule was, it was never as violent as that of the Baathist dictatorships in Baghdad and Damascus. With no tradition of extreme violence, up to now Libya’s road to ruin has been relatively low on casualties, but this could change very swiftly if present stand-offs switch to military confrontations.

Read more: http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2396-cracking-the-walnut-american-amnesia-and-the-libyan-aftermath.html