Jordanian former foreign minister holds meetings in Tunisia as rebels fight to cut off supply routes to Tripoli
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Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 August 2011 15.41 BST
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Libyan rebels celebrate their advances in the town of Zawiya, just 30 miles from Tripoli. Photograph: Giulio Petrocco/AP
The UN special envoy for Libya has said he is meeting representatives on both sides of the conflict, days after rebels made a significant advance that brought them within 30 miles of Muammar Gaddafi's stronghold in Tripoli.
Abdel-Elah al-Khatib, Jordan's former foreign minister, arrived in the Tunisian capital of Tunis on Monday for meetings with representatives of both Gaddafi and the rebels. There were no direct negotiations between the two sides, he said.
A Tunisian security official said Khatib might also meet a representative of the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, who has been on the Tunisian island of Djerba for the past days.
In Libya itself, a rebel advance over the weekend into the strategic city of Zawiya on the Mediterranean coast, only 30 miles from Tripoli, put opposition forces in their strongest position to attack the capital since the start of fighting six months ago. Fearing the fighting would soon reach them, some Tripoli residents formed long queues of traffic to leave the city.
The Obama administration said on Monday that Washington was encouraged by the rebel advances.
In a sign of the regime's growing distress, US defence officials said Libyan government forces had tapped into their stores of Scud missiles this weekend, firing one for the first time in the conflict. The missile was fired towards a second front in the east of the country around the town of Brega, but no one was hurt.
The launch was detected by US forces shortly after midnight on Sunday and the missile landed in the desert about 50 miles outside Brega, said one US official. It was launched about 50 miles east of Sirte, a city on the Mediterranean coast about 230 miles east of Tripoli. Sirte is Gaddafi's hometown and a bastion of support for him.
Noting that Scuds are not precision-guided missiles, officials said they could not tell if Brega was the target.
The two sides to the conflict fought for control of Zawiya on Tuesday on a main road leading from Tunisia in the west to Tripoli. Rebels are trying to cut off two major supply routes to the capital from Tunisia and from the south. The routes are crucial to Gaddafi's forces, with Nato imposing a no-fly zone over Libya. Rebels said on Monday that they had also cut oil pipelines from Zawiya to Tripoli. Oil-rich Libya's only functioning refineries are in Zawiya.
Medics at a field hospital on the outskirts of Zawiya said 15 people had been killed on Tuesday in an artillery strike, including a woman and a child.
On the second front in the east, Nato planes could be heard overhead in Brega as rebels patrolled what has become a ghost town. Smoke was seen rising from the industrial area as fighting raged.
Gaddafi's forces and the rebels have fought for the strategic port city throughout the conflict, with control swinging backwards and forwards between the two sides.
In Tripoli, the government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim confirmed that the former interior minister Nassr al-Mabrouk Abdullah had defected and left for Egypt.
"He was under psychological and social pressure and he could not resist it, but the battle continues," said Ibrahim.
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