BREGA: Libyan government forces Tuesday unleashed a withering bombardment of the rebels outside a key oil town, pushing them back despite NATO reports that nearly a third of Muammar Gaddafi's heavy weapons have been destroyed. The rebels managed to take part of the oil town of Brega the day before, aided by an international air campaign, but the rocket and artillery salvos unleashed on the rebels indicates the government's offensive capabilities remain very much intact. “When you see this, the situation is very bad. We cannot match their weapons,” said Kamal Mughrabi, 64, a retired soldier who joined the rebel army. “If the planes don't come back and hit them we'll have to keep pulling back.” Rebel attempts to fire rockets and mortars against the government forces were met with aggressive counter bombardments that sent many of the rebel forces scrambling back all the way to the town of Ajdabiyah, dozens of miles away. There did not appear to be any immediate response from the international aircraft patrolling the skies that have aided the rebels in the past. Early Tuesday, however, there was an airstrike against a convoy of eight government vehicles advancing toward rebel positions, rebel officer Abdel-Basset Abibi said, citing surveillance teams. Brig. Gen. Mark Van Uhm of NATO said Tuesday its aerial onslaught has so far destroyed 30 percent of Gaddafi's weapons. On Monday alone, the alliance carried out 14 attacks on ground targets across the country, destroying radars, munitions dumps, armored vehicles and a rocket launcher. Rebel forces have been helped by the arrival on the front of more trained soldiers and heavier weapons, but they are still struggling to match the more experienced and better equipped government troops, even with the aid of airstrikes. The government has softened its public stance against any compromise that would end the fighting, but government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said late Monday that any changes must be led by Gaddafi, who has ruled the country for more than four decades. “We could have any political system, any changes: constitution, election, anything, but the leader has to lead this forward,” he said in Tripoli.“Don't decide our future from abroad, give us a proposal for change from within,” Ibrahim said, chastising Western powers who have a “personal problem with the leader” and economic interests they believe would be better served if Gaddafi's government collapsed. The comments were unlikely to appease the rebels. Any long-term settlement poses tough questions about the fate of Gaddafi's family and the new leader of a post-Gaddafi nation, and the opposition has rejected any solution that would involve one of his sons taking power. The head of the African Union, meanwhile, voiced his support for Gaddafi, calling for an end to foreign interference into what he called an internal Libyan problem. Teodoro Obiang Nguema 69-year-old president of Equatorial Guinea described Western military efforts to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya as a “so-called humanitarian intervention.” But elsewhere in the world, the rebels saw success in their efforts to establish an internationally recognized government in eastern Libya, forging tighter links with Britain and Italy, both potentially major markets for Libyan oil. Italy offered diplomatic recognition to the Libyan opposition council on Monday, becoming the third country to do so after France and Qatar. Shipping data provider Lloyd's Intelligence, meanwhile, confirmed that a Greek-owned tanker is on its way to Libya to pick up an oil shipment, the first in almost three weeks. The delivery would be only a tiny fraction of Libya's pre-crisis exports of around 1.6 million barrels a day, but is viewed by analysts as a symbolic step forward. The tanker, capable of carrying around one million barrels of crude oil, is currently off Port Said in Egypt and expected to arrive at the Libyan port of Marsa Al-Hariga. Gaddafi's British-educated son Seif Al-Islam, on Tuesday, dismissed reports that his father's inner circle of advisers was crumbling following the defection of Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa. He said “of course” there would be defections among senior members of the regime because some of them are old and tired and “not young like us.”
