Brega (Libya):
Forces loyal to the Libyan leader, Colonel Moammar el-Gaddafi, repulsed a rebel push to the west on Wednesday and then counter-attacked with airstrikes and increasingly accurate artillery fire on the strategic refinery town of Ras Lanuf, which the rebels have held for several days.
In the western half of the country, elite government troops continued to pound the besieged, rebel-held city of Zawiyah, only 30 miles from Colonel Gaddafi's stronghold, the capital city of Tripoli. The government claimed to have mostly recaptured Zawiyah on Wednesday, but it has made such claims falsely in the past.
However, rebels in the city reported being pinned down by tank and sniper fire, and clinging to the city's central Martyrs' Square as they made their last stand against government troops, Reuters reported.
By late afternoon, state television was broadcasting scenes of wild celebration in the square by Gaddafi loyalists waving green flags. But there was no way to verify the report, and a state-sponsored reporting trip to the city for foreign journalists was abruptly canceled.
Opposition leaders in the city told Reuters that the setback was only temporary, and that they would regain control during the night.
In Ras Lanuf, witnesses reported seeing warplanes circling the refinery in the early afternoon, followed by an explosion and thick plumes of black smoke. The blast did not seem to come from the heart of the facility, the witnesses said, but off to the side in an area of numerous large storage tanks.
A rebel spokesman told The Associated Press that Gaddafi's forces had hit a pipeline carrying crude oil to the refinery, while the government blamed the blast on rebel forces allied with Al Qaeda. An official with Libya Emirate Oil Refining Company said the plant had been closed down, not from damage but because most of the employees had fled.
The rebels, reinforced on Tuesday by dozens of trucks with heavy weapons and cadres of professional soldiers, made a move west toward the town of Bin Jawwad, having been driven from there days ago, blunting their efforts to continue a march toward Tripoli. On Wednesday, during the onslaught, hundreds of rebel fighters had advanced more than a half mile to the west.
As Colonel Gaddafi's forces try to retake a series of strategic oil towns on the east coast of the country, which fell early in the rebellion to antigovernment rebels, the West continues to debate what actions to take, including the creation of a possible no-flight zone to ground Libyan warplanes.
On Wednesday, speaking in an interview with Turkish public television, Colonel Gaddafi vowed that his countrymen would take up arms to resist such measures, calling them an attempt to rob Libyans of their freedom and their oil.
The debate on a no-flight zone has become louder in world capitals. European countries like Britain and France seem to favor the idea while the United State defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, has underscored the difficulties of imposing such a ban, though he has seemed to soften his resistance in recent days. Britain and France are working on a United Nations resolution to authorize a no-flight zone, although it was unclear whether such a measure could gain the necessary votes of Russia and China in the Security Council.
President Obama and the British prime minister, David Cameron, in a phone call Tuesday, agreed on the shared objective of "the departure of Gaddafi from power as quickly as possible," the White House said in a statement, adding that they would "press forward with planning, including at NATO, on the full spectrum of possible responses, including surveillance, humanitarian assistance, enforcement of the arms embargo and a no-fly zone."
Human rights abuses by the Gaddafi government could provide another possible trigger for international intervention, and on Wednesday the United Nations special rapporteur for torture, Juan E. Méndez, said that his agency was investigating a series of opposition charges of atrocities in the days before Feb. 25, when the government invited foreign journalists into Tripoli to report on the uprising, The Associated Press reported. The accusations include picking up the wounded off city streets and using ambulances to gain admission to hospitals and then taking away patients, who were subsequently tortured and, in some cases, executed.
Envoys for Colonel Gaddafi fanned out across Europe and, according to some reports, Latin America and Africa, for purposes that remained obscure. Emissaries were reported to have visited Egypt, Greece, Portugal, Malta and Brussels in an effort to head off international action against Libya, and Greece confirmed that the Colonel himself had spoken with the Greek prime minister, George A. Papandreou. An analyst with contacts in the Libyan iuntelligence services, told Reuters that some of the missions, particularly those to Latin American and African countries, might well constitute preliminary discussions about a refuge for the Gaddafis should they be forced to flee. But that report could not be confirmed.
Egyptian officials, who spoke in return for anonymity under departmental rules, said Colonel Gaddafi sent an emissary to Cairo on Wednesday. A Libyan jet landed in the Egyptian capital, the officials said. carrying a senior military official -- Maj. Gen. Abdel Rahman Ben Ali, identified as the deputy minister of Libya's logistics and supply ministry. Security officials said he was received by Egyptian military intelligence.
The nature of the visit was unclear, though reports have emerged in recent days of a major effort by Islamic agencies to supply the rebel-held east with food, medical supplies and other humanitarian aid. Cairo also hosts the Arab League, which is set to debate the issue of a no-flight zone this weekend, news reports said. Libya's representative at the Arab League resigned last month, saying the Libyan leader had lost all legitimacy.
The plane, a private Falcon jet, took off from a small Libyan airfield and flew through Maltese and Greek airspace, news reports said. Since Libya's uprising began last month, Colonel Gaddafi has seemed isolated with few, if any, Arab leaders ready to speak to him, publicly at least. The officials said General Ben Ali was seeking a meeting with the military council running Egypt since last month's ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.
But Musa Ibrahim, a spokesman for Colonel Gaddafi, said there would be nothing unusual about the flight since Libya was in constant touch with its neighbors about the crisis in the region. Speaking to reporters, he did not comment on the specific flight on Wednesday. Despite Libya's turmoil, commercial flights from Tripoli are still flying to cities in the region and elsewhere. There was no indication of whom General Ben Ali intended to see.
Two planeloads of Libyan officials were also en route to Brussels on Wednesday to confer with European Union and NATO officials, Al Jazeera reported, to argue against the imposition of a no-flight zone and other measures against Libya.
In his interview with Turkish journalists in Tripoli, broadcast in Turkey on Wednesday, Colonel Gaddafi seemed almost to welcome the idea of a no-flight zone himself, arguing that it would expose Western motives.
"Such a move would be very useful in a way that all Libyan people would then realize that their real intention is to take Libya under control, take people's freedoms away and seize their oil," he said. "Therefore, all Libyan people would take up arms and fight."
As on several occasions in the past, he argued that Libya has provided a guarantee of security in the Mediterranean stretching to southern Europe, standing as a bulwark against Al Qaeda.
"The stability of Libya means the security of the Mediterranean and therefore the security of the world," Colonel Gaddafi said. "If Al Qaeda takes over in Libya, it would be a major disaster and Europe would soon be filled with refugees that Al Qaeda would transfer from Africa."
"If they seize control here, the whole region including Israel would be dragged into chaos," he said. "No one can prevent them as efficiently as we did."
Global powers seem frustrated by their apparent inability to influence events here, with Colonel Gaddafi seemingly impervious to criticism and rebels in eastern Libya cautious about accepting Western help beyond the imposition of a no-flight zone.
The diplomatic and political effort to force Colonel Gaddafi's departure is focused on NATO meetings in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.
The Pentagon press secretary, Geoffrey Morrell, told reporters traveling with Mr. Gates from Afghanistan to Brussels on Wednesday that the defense secretary's position on a possible no-flight zone had not changed -- in short, that it remains one of a number of potential military courses of action that Mr. Gates is providing to Mr. Obama.
"We are committed to providing the president with the full range of options for him to consider, including a no-fly zone," Mr. Morrell said on Mr. Gates' plane. "But he also sees it as his responsibility to provide the president and his national security team with the potential consequences of military action. So that work has been and is underway."
Mr. Morrell took issue with suggestions that Mr. Gates, based on comments the defense secretary made on Capitol Hill last week, was adamantly opposed to a no-flight zone. In those comments, Mr. Gates said that people should "call a spade a spade" and recognize that establishing a no-flight zone would first require strikes on Libya's air defense system.
In previous public statement, Mr. Gates has said that now is not the time for the United States to get involved in another war in the Middle East.
Despite those remarks, Mr. Morrell said that Mr. Gates "has not staked out a position in opposition to any particular course of action."
In the Middle East, the Gulf Cooperation Council has already endorsed a no-flight zone, and speaking in Washington, a representative of the Arab League said it was expected to support the idea as well. Western leaders have stressed the need for international support before undertaking a no-flight zone, so they do not appear to be meddling.
A report released Tuesday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based group known for its assessments of relative military strength, underscored the challenge facing the rebels. Colonel Gaddafi "has long neglected the military formations in the east; the dilapidated bases and installations there contrast sharply with the well-kept barracks and tank parks outside Tripoli," the report said, relying in part on satellite images to compare the number and make of tanks and other equipment. "This goes a long way toward explaining why the momentum generated by the revolution has yet to overwhelm pro-regime forces."
Air power is Colonel Gaddafi's biggest advantage, the report found, noting that so far the rebels appeared unable to use bases and planes they captured in the east. Planes and helicopters give the Gaddafi forces an additional advantage, the report said, in moving ammunition and supplies, a crucial factor given the length of the Libyan coast between the rebel stronghold of Benghazi and Tripoli.