http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/world/africa/16libya.html

August 15, 2011

Libya's Security Chief Arrives in Cairo

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIM

CAIRO -- The Libyan security chief arrived unexpectedly with his family in Cairo on Monday in an apparent high-level defection from the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi as the rebels challenging his rule seized ground in a strategic oil port just 30 miles from his Tripoli stronghold.

Colonel Qaddafi's interior minister, Nassr al-Mabrouk Abdullah, landed on a private plane in Cairo with nine family members who were traveling on tourist visas and headed for a local hotel, Egyptian security officials at the airport said Monday.

The Qaddafi government's ambassador, Ali Maria, said in short telephone interview that he had "no information" about Mr. Abdullah's arrival or defection.

If confirmed, Mr. Abdullah's defection would signal a new crack in the Qaddafi government after weeks of seeming stability since the defection of Colonel Qaddafi's righthand man, Musa Kusa, and a handful of others around the time of start of the Libyan uprising and NATO's bombing campaign in its support. While the Qaddafi government has recently dispatched other senior officials on quiet trips abroad for diplomatic negotiations or other errands, those on official business do not usually travel with their families.

His reported flight to Cairo came only hours after Colonel Qaddafi urged his countrymen to "liberate Libya" from NATO and traitors. His speech, delivered over a poor quality telephone line and broadcast by state television in audio only, was his first public address since rebel fighters launched their latest offensive, Reuters reported.

"The Libyan people will remain and the Fateh revolution will remain," he said, referring to the movement that brought him to power in 1969. "Move forward, challenge, pick up your weapons, go to the fight for liberating Libya inch by inch from the traitors and from NATO."

"Get ready for the fight," he added. "The blood of martyrs is fuel for the battlefield."

Mr. Abdullah's flight to Cairo came as the Libyan rebels also appear to have broken out of a stalemate to make their first major advance in weeks, occupying at large portions of the strategic city of Zawiyah with the hope of rebel fighters who had gone underground inside the city. Taking Zawiyah places the rebels on Colonel Qaddafi's doorstep where they could also threaten his access to fuel from Zawiyah's refineries and others supplies over the coastal road from Tunisia.

The incursion late Saturday into Zawiyah also promised to bolster the flagging morale of the rebel movement, which is still reeling from the assassination of a top military leader.

A rebel military spokesman in Benghazi reported that the rebels had also taken control of Surman, farther west along the road to Tunisia; that claim could not immediately be confirmed. Clashes were reported near the Ras Ajdir border crossing with Tunisia, the spokesman said, as well as in Gheryan, a city in the Nafusah Mountains that straddles another important route connecting Tripoli with Sabha, a Qaddafi stronghold in the south.

In the east, the rebels on Sunday continued their assault on Brega, an oil city where they are trying to force a contingent of Qaddafi fighters out of the city's manufacturing district. Colonel Qaddafi's soldiers were said to remain in control of important oil facilities in both eastern and western Libya; the rebels, who have said they are afraid to damage such installations, have had a difficult time dislodging opponents from them.

It was not clear whether the rebel gains reported on Sunday resulted from a coordinated attack effort, from NATO bombing or simply from the mounting pressures weighing on Colonel Qaddafi's loyalists, who are increasingly short of fuel, food and ammunition as the international effort to end the conflict has gained momentum.

It was also far from certain whether the rebels could hold the ground they gained, something they have often had trouble doing in the past.

On Sunday evening, there were reports that Qaddafi snipers were still operating in Zawiyah, 20 miles west of Tripoli. Reuters, quoting a rebel soldier, said that Qaddafi loyalists were still in control of the city's oil refinery.

NATO reported that on Saturday, its forces struck two tanks in the vicinity of Zawiyah. The rebels who then stormed the city said they faced little resistance, and by Sunday morning, the tricolored rebel flag was flying from a shop near the town's central market, Reuters reported. Video images broadcast on Al Jazeera showed triumphant rebel fighters rallying in the city beneath a bridge, with artillery shelling audible in the distance. The roads through Zawiyah and Gheryan are the last overland supply routes into Tripoli that are still open. If the rebels gain control of both roads, they may find themselves in the difficult position of managing a siege of a city still filled with civilians.

Rebel leaders worked over the weekend to quiet the squabbles that had flared up in their ranks after the killing of Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, who had defected from Colonel Qaddafi's army in February and become the rebels' senior military leader. At the front lines in Brega on Friday, there was little sign of the most troubling rift to emerge, the one between the officers in the army that General Younes commanded and the leaders of the volunteer fighters known as the Union of Revolutionary Forces.

The rebel authorities have recently allowed reporters to visit the front lines, after months of restricting such visits. In interviews, fighters there spoke of coordinated advances involving special forces soldiers and the civilian volunteers, and they seemed untroubled by the lack of a central leadership figure. They said they took orders from their brigade commanders and trusted that their leaders were speaking to one another.

The rebels near Brega fired rockets from positions in a valley as their tanks, rarely seen in action, fired from the edge of a nearby hill. But at the sound of incoming rocket fire, the rebel fighters panicked, jumped in their trucks and drove away from the front lines.

David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo and Kareem Fahim from Benghazi, Libya.