The latest round of UN-brokered Western Sahara negotiations between Morocco and the Polisario Front ended without agreement—as Rabat signed contracts with foreign oil companies to explore in the occupied territory.
A UN fact-finding team finds fuel, food and medicine shortages in Tripoli. Qaddafi meanwhile accuses NATO of bombing civilian targets, while NATO accuses Qaddafi of using civilian infrastructure for military purposes.
The NATO powers hope a compliant post-Qaddafi regime in Libya will counter-balance the OPEC price hawks. This doubtless means little at the moment to Libya’s Berbers, who have won cultural freedom in their rebel zone, and face a massacre if Qaddafi prevails.
As a desperate Qaddafi threatens suicide attacks on European capitals, signs of a split emerge in the rebel National Transitional Council—raising fears of a widening of the civil war even after the dictator falls.
In another contradictory message, the US House of Representatives voted down a measure to defund US military operations in Libya but approved an amendment barring aid to the Libyan rebels.
Mauritanian security forces repelled a militant attack on an army base located in the southeastern town of Bassiknou near the border with Mali, days after a joint Mauritania-Mali military operation on a purported AQIM base in Mali.
A Berber rebel army from the southwest Nafusa Mountains is advancing on Tripoli, armed by recent French air-drops and apparently coordinating its campaign with NATO air-strikes.
Thousands of protesters again took to the streets of Morocco to push for democratic reforms despite voter approval two days earlier of a constitutional reform that curbs the near-absolute powers of King Mohammed VI.
Paris announced that French forces have dropped arms to Berber rebels in Libya’s western mountains, while Barack Obama continues to assert that the bombing does not constitute “hostilities” that would allow Congressional action against it.
International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo urged personal aides of Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi to implement the arrest warrant issued against him, saying the aides could be “part of the solution.”
Is NATO’s Libya war a necessary humanitarian intervention or bloody imperialist aggression? Is it possible to support the rebels without supporting the NATO intervention that they support? Our readers weigh in…
The Obama administration argues that the bombardment of Libya does not constitute "hostilities," to weasel out of the War Power Act restrictions—while anti-war commentators ignore the fact that Libya's rebels avidly support the bombing.
