Brega, Libya - Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan army faced an increasingly organised and confident rebel force on Thursday which is appealing for international support and looking to take its military successes west towards Tripoli.
As the struggle between Gaddafi loyalists and rebels who have taken swathes of Libya intensified, one report said Gaddafi and the president of the Arab League had agreed to a peace plan from Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.
News network Al Jazeera said the plan would involve a commission from Latin America, Europe and the Middle East trying to reach a negotiated outcome between the Libyan leader and rebel forces for this North African oil-producing country.
A senior official told Reuters in Caracas he did not know what Gaddafi had said about Chavez's idea. Libyan and Arab League officials were not immediately available for comment.
On the military front, Libyan rebels repulsed a land and air offensive by Gaddafi's forces on the eastern oil terminal of Brega as the defiant leader warned foreign powers of “another Vietnam” if they intervened in the popular uprising against his 41-year rule.
Rebels in their eastern bastion of Benghazi called for UN-backed air strikes to halt attacks by African mercenaries they said Gaddafi was using against his own people.
Analysts cautioned against drawing firm conclusions from fast moving events in a situation of erratic communications.
“We should keep in mind that both the government and the rebels are trying to spin an image of momentum,” said Shashank Joshi, an analyst at Britain's Royal United Services Institute.
The uprising, the bloodiest yet against long-serving rulers in the Middle East and North Africa, is causing a humanitarian crisis, especially on the Tunisian border where tens of thousands of foreign workers are trying to flee to safety.
Oil prices held near 2-½ year highs on Thursday due to fears the unrest could spread to other OPEC producers.
Government troops, backed by air power, launched an attack on Wednesday and briefly captured Brega, an oil export terminal 800 km east of Tripoli.
Opposition forces took back the town they have held for about a week, rebel officers said. They were ready to move west towards the capital, they said, if Gaddafi refused to quit.
Basking in the adulation of loyalists in Tripoli, Gaddafi launched into a tirade against the “armed gangsters” he said were behind the unrest, part of a conspiracy to colonise Libya and seize its oil.
“We will enter a bloody war and thousands and thousands of Libyans will die if the United States enters or NATO enters,” Gaddafi told Tripoli supporters at a gathering televised live.
“We are ready to hand out weapons to a million, or 2 million or 3 million, and another Vietnam will begin.”
A Tripoli resident and Gaddafi opponent, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters: “Gaddafi will hang on for a while. It's not going to be easy for an unarmed crowd to face highly armed forces eager to shoot their own people.”
The assault on Brega appeared to be the most significant military operation by Gaddafi since the uprising erupted in mid-February and set off a confrontation that Washington says could descend into a long civil war unless Gaddafi steps down.
Witnesses said the attack was backed by heavy weapons and air strikes. One said Gaddafi's forces were 2-3 km from the city centre and had 300-350 rebels pinned down at an oil industry airport on the city outskirts.
In Benghazi, the rebel National Libyan Council called for air strikes. Spokesman Hafiz Ghoga said: “We call for specific attacks on strongholds of these mercenaries. The presence of any foreign forces on Libyan soil is strongly opposed. There is a big difference between this and strategic air strikes.”
In a possible response to Western hints that the opposition needs to unify to facilitate rebel links with outside powers, Ghoga said a former justice minister, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, would be chairman of the council which will have 30 members and be based in Benghazi before moving later to Tripoli.
Libya's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, one of the first Libyan diplomats to denounce Gaddafi and defect, said the United Nations may back a resolution for a no-fly zone if the National Libyan Council requested it officially.
The US government is cautious about imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, stressing the diplomatic and military risks involved, but has moved warships into the Mediterranean.
Any sort of foreign military involvement in Arab countries is a sensitive topic for Western nations uncomfortably aware that Iraq suffered years of bloodletting and al-Qaeda violence after a 2003 US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.
The Arab League said it was against direct outside military intervention, but could enforce a no-fly zone in cooperation with the African Union. Realistically though, only the United States could carry out such an operation.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said US military assets could be used to support the movement of supplies to areas in need but a no-fly zone was not an immediate priority. “I think we are a long way from making that decision,” she told a Senate hearing.
Spain became the latest European country to offer help, saying it would send a plane loaded with humanitarian aid to the Tunisian-Libyan border on Thursday. The plane will be used to ferry Egyptian migrants from Djerba to Cairo. - Reuters