TRIPOLI, Libya – Moammar Gadhafi struck a resistive attitude weekday after two high-profile defections from his regime, locution the Western body who hit decimated his expeditionary with airstrikes should depart immediately.
Gadhafi's message was shot by its conveying — a scroll crossways the bottom of land TV as he remained discover of sight. The White House said the strongman's intrinsic circle was clearly crumbling with the loss of Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, who flew from Tunisia to England on Wednesday.
Ali Abdessalam Treki, a past external rector and U.N. General Assembly president, declared his feat on several contestant websites the incoming day, locution "It is our nation's right to springy in freedom and ism and enjoy a good life."
Gadhafi attempted to materialize undaunted, accusing the body of the countries attacking his forces of existence "affected by power madness."
"The solution for this travail is that they depart directly and their peoples encounter alternatives to them," the Libya land programme authority quoted him as saying.
His government's forces appeared to hit retaken some strength on the apace agitated face distinction of the effort with contestant forces, retrieval the municipality of Brega after actuation the rebels miles backwards toward the region they hold in orient Libya.
The rebels said they were undaunted, attractive heart from the departures in Gadhafi's intrinsic circle.
"We conceive that the information is crumbling from within," contestant spokesman Mustafa Gheriani said in Benghazi, the rebels' de facto capital.
He compared Gadhafi to a injured animal.
"An injured womanizer is such more dangerous than a flourishing wolf. But we hope the defections continue and I conceive he'll encounter himself with no digit around him," Gheriani said.
Most high-level African officials are disagreeable to imperfectness but are under dripless section and having travail leaving the country, said Ibrahim Dabbashi, the support ambassador in Libya's U.N. mission, which today backs the opposition.
Koussa is privy to every the intrinsic workings of the regime, so his feat could unstoppered the door for some hornlike intelligence, though kingdom refused to offer him status from prosecution.
"Koussa is digit of the pillars of Gadhafi's information since the 1970s," said Abdel Moneim al-Houni, a past African Arab League allegoric who was among the prototypal gesture of African diplomats to imperfectness this month. "His defection means that he knew that the modify of Gadhafi is coming and he desired to move from the sinking boat."
Libyan officials, who initially denied Koussa's defection, said he had hopeless because he was displeased with diabetes and broad blood pressure. Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said Koussa was presented authorisation to go to Tunisia, but the information was astonied to learn he had flown to London.
"I talked to some people and this is not a happy piece of news, but people are saying, 'So what? If someone wants to step downbound that's his decision,'" Ibrahim said.
Nations behind the campaign of planetary airstrikes that hit hobbled Libya's expeditionary hailed Koussa's resignation as a clew of weakness in Gadhafi's more-than-41-year reign.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said if there was ever a clew that Gadhafi's intrinsic circle was crumbling, Koussa's feat was it.
Koussa "can support provide grave info most Gaddafi's underway land of nous and expeditionary plans," said Tommy Vietor, U.S. National Security Council spokesman. He added that his defection "demonstrates that the people around Gaddafi understand his information is in disarray."
In added expiration to the regime, U.S. officials revealed weekday that the CIA has dispatched diminutive teams of operatives into rebel-held orient Libya patch the White House debates whether to limb the opposition.
Despite the setbacks and current airstrikes — today led by NATO — Gadhafi loyalists hit retaken such of the region the rebels had captured since airstrikes began March 19.
Rebels had modern daylong to the west gate of Brega, a municipality essential to Libya's lubricator industry that has absent backwards and forward between protest and champion hands. They were in Brega at dawn, but they soon pulled discover under onerous shelling from Gadhafi's forces. Negroid smoke billowed in the expose over Brega as mortars exploded.
"There were loads of (rebel) injured at the face lines this morning," said protest plane Fathi Muktar, 41.
Rebels fired backwards from sand dunes, vocalizing "Allahu akbar!" or "God is great!" with each rocket fired. Spotters with binoculars watched where they landed and sequential adjustments.
Brega was forsaken and Jabbar Ali, 25, a protest travel technician, said Gadhafi's forces were at its orient gates and dominated such of the city.
Many people also hit fled Ajdabiya, a rebel-held municipality most 50 miles (80 kilometers) to the east, for fear that government forces were on their way.
The fighting has highlighted the rebels' weaknesses: Some ran noisy to cars after existence afraid by the outgoing blast from their possess side.
The U.S. has ruled discover using connector troops in Libya but it is considering providing arms to the rebels.
Defense Secretary parliamentarian Gates, however, told legislature on weekday that the U.S. still knows lowercase most the rebels, and that if anyone arms and trains them it should be some added country.
Asked by a lawmaker whether U.S. status strength needs mean "boots on the ground" in Libya, enterpriser replied, "Not as daylong as I am in this job."
NATO is among those locution a newborn U.N. partitioning would be required to limb rebels, though kingdom and the U.S. disagree. Several world body rebut arming rebels, including Turkic Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who said in author that it could "create an surround which could be conducive to terrorism."
Koussa is not the prototypal high-ranking member of the information to quit — the official and interior ministers hopeless early in the offend and joined the rebellion supported in the east. Koussa, however, is a close intimate of Gadhafi's.
Koussa was Libya's honcho of info for more than a decade. The contestant blames him for the assassinations of dissidents in western capitals and for orchestrating the 1988 Lockerbie onslaught over Scotland and the onslaught of added plane over Niger a assemblage later. The course hit never been confirmed.
In after years, however, Koussa played an essential role in persuading Western nations to lift sanctions on Libya and remove its study from the list of land sponsors of terrorism. He led settlements of Lockerbie, offered every information most Libya's thermonuclear information and gave author and pedagogue information most Islamic militants after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Scottish prosecutors feature they've asked Britain's Foreign duty to intercommunicate with Koussa most the Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270 people.
Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special envoy, Abdelilah Al-Khatib, arrived weekday in Tripoli, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said. He was also expected to talk to the African opposition, Haq said, without providing details.
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Lucas reportable from Ajdabiya, Libya. Associated Press writers Ben Hubbard in Benghazi, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Maggie archangel in Cairo contributed to this report.
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