Anxiety Roils Libyan Capital Amid Top-Level Defections
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and C.J. CHIVERS
NYT
TRIPOLI, Libya — Anxiety seized the Qaddafi government on Thursday over the second defection in two days of a senior official close to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, stirring talk of others to follow and a crackdown to stop them.
And, on Friday British news reports on the BBC and in The Guardian newspaper said Mohammed Ismail, a senior aide to one of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons, had traveled to London for talks with British officials in recent days. But there was no immediate confirmation of those reports. A Foreign Office spokesman, who spoke in return for anonymity under departmental procedures, said: “We are not going to provide a running commentary on our contact with Libyan officials.”
As rebels challenging pro-Qaddafi forces struggled to regroup around the oil port of Brega, and the roar of allied warplanes was heard again over the capital, residents reacted in shock at the defection of Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, a close ally of Colonel Qaddafi’s since the early days of the revolution, who once earned the nickname “envoy of death” for his role in the assassinations of earlier Libyan defectors.
And then came the defection to Egypt of another senior official, Ali Abdussalam el-Treki, a former foreign minister and a former United Nations ambassador who had worked closely with Colonel Qaddafi for decades.
(More here.)
NYT
TRIPOLI, Libya — Anxiety seized the Qaddafi government on Thursday over the second defection in two days of a senior official close to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, stirring talk of others to follow and a crackdown to stop them.
And, on Friday British news reports on the BBC and in The Guardian newspaper said Mohammed Ismail, a senior aide to one of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons, had traveled to London for talks with British officials in recent days. But there was no immediate confirmation of those reports. A Foreign Office spokesman, who spoke in return for anonymity under departmental procedures, said: “We are not going to provide a running commentary on our contact with Libyan officials.”
As rebels challenging pro-Qaddafi forces struggled to regroup around the oil port of Brega, and the roar of allied warplanes was heard again over the capital, residents reacted in shock at the defection of Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, a close ally of Colonel Qaddafi’s since the early days of the revolution, who once earned the nickname “envoy of death” for his role in the assassinations of earlier Libyan defectors.
And then came the defection to Egypt of another senior official, Ali Abdussalam el-Treki, a former foreign minister and a former United Nations ambassador who had worked closely with Colonel Qaddafi for decades.
(More here.)
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