Efforts to find a deal to end the civil war in Libya intensified on Tuesday, with a U.N. special envoy heading for Tripoli and Western powers signaling that Muammar Gaddafi could stay in the country if he gives up power.
U.N. envoy Abdul Elah al-Khatib, who visited the rebels in Benghazi on Monday, is looking for a "political process" that will end a war that has failed to dislodge Gaddafi despite months of rebel attacks backed by NATO bombing raids.
France and other Western members of the anti-Gaddafi coalition have signaled that the Libyan leader could stay in the country provided he and his circle agree to step down.
Once the Western and UN diplomats are circling the area, you know that victory is dead.
I have to ask, since this seems to be the fig leaf for NATO to pretend we've won, what does it mean for Khaddafi to "agree to step down"?
Remember, Khaddafi doesn't officially have a government title:
Qadhafi remained the de facto head of state and secretary general of the GPC until 1980, when he gave up his office. ...[He] holds no formal office[.]
So what do we do, let him restate his non-official position? Make him promise not to de facto rule the country even as he stays in it and continues to have no formal position?
Just what would it mean other than allowing NATO to pretend it changed the regime?
UPDATE: Khaddafi is surely hurting in his rump realm under pressure from rebels and bombed by NATO, but he isn't appearing desperate:
The U.N. envoy, Abdul Elah al-Khatib, arrived in Tripoli straight from talks with rebels in their eastern stronghold of Benghazi on Monday.
He met Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi who said they had a productive dialogue -- but about implementing U.N. resolutions, not negotiating an end to the five-month-old conflict in which neither side seems to have the upper hand.
"This aggression (air strikes) needs to stop immediately, without that we cannot have a dialogue, we cannot solve any problems in Libya," Mahmoudi told a news conference afterwards.
Bold words. Can he back them up?
I mean, I'm not shocked that Khaddafi has survived. If you've followed this blog on the war, that's clear. His forces have nowhere to go, are far better trained and organized, face no trained and equipped army, and have adapted to the heavily restricted NATO air campaign (the air campaign has hurt the loyalists and saved the rebels in the first day of attacks, but alone it has not been decisive in regime change).
But NATO is one good intelligence tip away from landing a smart bomb within its blast radius of Khaddafi. This war is still a race between whether that bomb hits first or NATO will to fight falters first. Does Khaddafi really think he can insist on a halt to bombing before talks start? Nice work if you can get it, as the saying goes.
I think he should get talks going before playing the "halt bombing or I walk from the talks" card. Get the Europeans talking and they'll talk. They love to talk. They hate it when the talking stops. They'll cave on bombing then, not wanting to be blamed for the "failure" of diplomacy.
UPDATE: So who will dare fight during Ramadan? Khaddafi would be wise to declare a unilateral Ramadan ceasefire. Practically speaking, he's mostly just sitting and taking the punches anyway. Why not make it official? If the rebels dare to fight he can tag them as un-Islamic. And if NATO keeps bombing? Well, the propaganda writes itself, no? And this despite the fact that historically Moslems have had no problem continuing to wage war during Ramadan. And we have managed just fine in doing the same through years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. But NATO is a lot shakier as a group.
