A NETWORK of Libyan defectors, including former regime stalwart Moussa Koussa, are helping Nato to destroy Col Muammar Gadafy’s military sites, including bunkers from which much of the war has been run, according to senior officials in Libya.
Nato planners have stepped up their operations over Tripoli and the western mountains in recent days, despite a strike on the eastern city of Brega on Friday that killed up to 11, many of them Islamic clerics.
But British defence chiefs are applying pressure on other Nato states to escalate the bombing amid mounting concern that military action will end in stalemate.
Nearly two months since the start of air strikes, they fear divisions within Nato and at the UN will lead to fewer sorties just at a time when, they claim, even the regime’s core support is showing signs of cracking.
Despite almost nightly air attacks and increasing numbers of daylight strikes on the outskirts of Tripoli, the capital remains under regime control.
Discontent, for now, seems directed at France, Britain and Italy, whom residents blame for a worsening fuel shortage.
But there is growing anger towards former regime loyalists, first among them Mr Koussa, who defected to Britain in early April after more than 30 years as Col Gadafy’s most trusted lieutenant.
The former foreign minister and intelligence chief is understood to have passed on invaluable details on the precise location of the regime’s most sensitive sites.
“He was the ‘black box’ of the regime,” said an unnamed official who worked with Koussa. “I was with him the day before he left and nobody knew that he was going to do that. Why did he do it? I’d say he must have been emotionally weak. Things must have got to him.”
After spending a month in Britain, Mr Koussa is now in Qatar. The regime has vehemently attacked Nato for bombing sites it described as either “civilian, or non-military”. Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim characterised as “murderous and barbaric” the Brega strike in which the Imams were killed.
But a Dutch engineer, Freek Landmeter, claimed he had built a large bunker for the Gadafy regime beneath the location in 1988. Mr Landmeter provided GPS co-ordinates which matched those provided by the regime on Friday for the guest house.
Nato described the Brega and Tripoli sites as “command and control centres”.
Chief of the British defence staff Gen Sir David Richards said he wanted the rules of engagement altered so attacks can be launched against the infrastructure propping up the Libyan leader. “The vice is closing on Gadafy, but we need . . . more intense military action,” he told a Sunday newspaper. “Nato is not attacking infrastructure targets in Libya. But if we want to increase the pressure on Gadafy’s regime then we need to give serious consideration to increasing the range of targets.” – (Guardian service)