Nato promises to stay the course in Libya and says military operation has made 'clear progress'

Fears US may waver as Congress questions what the mission is aiming to achieve and military situation remains essentially deadlocked.

Nato warplanes struck Tripoli several times on Tuesday in a sustained bombardment. Locals inspected the aftermath yesterday. Ahmed Jadallah / Reuters

WASHINGTON // Nato defence ministers meeting yesterday in Brussels promised to stay the course in Libya and agreed that the military operation over Libya had made "clear progress".

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato secretary general, said the air campaign had "prevented a massacre. We have preserved innocent lives, and we have prepared the ground for a political settlement".

Ministers also agreed the time had come to plan for a Libya without Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, Mr Rasmussen said on Tuesday.

Today, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, will hold talks in Abu Dhabi with the Libya Contact Group, to discuss options in Libya.

The UAE "was one of the leading countries within the GCC that has called for action against the Qaddafi regime. And it has also been instrumental in providing aid to the Libyan people", said Riad Kahwaji, the chief executive of the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.

Analysts continue to question how much Nato can achieve in Libya, so leaders meeting in Abu Dhabi today will have much to talk about.

Experts question the effectiveness of the air campaign and the opposition forces. Colonel Qaddafi remains as defiant as ever and in spite of an intensification of the Nato strikes and some modest gains by rebels in the west, the military situation remains essentially deadlocked.

Rebel forces control the eastern part of the country, just as they did when Nato air forces began attacks in March. Colonel Qaddafi's forces remain in control of the west.

"We haven't seen any fundamental realities shift in a really marked way," said Nathan Hughes, military analyst with Stratfor, a Texas-based consulting group. Instead, Mr Hughes argued, the situation was only "evolving" in a way that would demand patience from Nato countries.

Nato leaders continue to express confidence that Colonel Qaddafi sooner or later will be prised from power. But the political will to stay the course is likely to be increasingly tested, and an early conclusion remains elusive. Mr Hughes said dramatic change on the ground would come about only if the military strategy is compatible with the political objectives.

"The coalition has stated that it wants Qaddafi to go, but it has also demonstrated that it is unwilling to apply the military force necessary to do that."

Diplomacy is also at a stalemate. Russia and China, both countries that abstained from supporting UN resolution 1973 that authorised the Nato mission, have held talks with representatives from both the Libyan regime and the opposition in recent days, but no progress has been reported.

The Libyan opposition remains adamant that Colonel Qaddafi must leave power, a stance supported by Nato countries. Colonel Qaddafi, meanwhile, as recently as Tuesday, vowed to fight to the end. "Death, victory, it does not matter," the Libyan leader said in a 10-minute speech on Libyan TV. "We are not surrendering."

But the US administration faces dissent at home, where legislators have been trying to pin the White House down over what its mission is in the country.

Two bills were presented in the House of Representatives last week critical of the administration's decision to take part in the Nato operation. One, which was defeated, would have called on the administration to immediately end any US military role in the Nato operation in Libya.

The other, which passed easily but does not have the force of law, chastised the administration for failing to consult Congress and called on US president Barack Obamato clarify the administration's aims in Libya in 14 days.

Some legislators have voiced support for US involvement. But their numbers appear to be diminishing. The postponement of a discussion of a bill to support the US strategy in the US Senate's Committee on Foreign Relations suggested that the two senior senators behind the bill, John Kerry, the Democratic head of the committee, and John McCain, a Republican, had failed to get enough votes to get it passed.

For now, as long as costs remain low and there are no military losses, that is unlikely to cause too many headaches for Mr Obama, said Michael O'Hanlon, a national security and defence analyst at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think-tank. "Right now, Obama is in this happy position where a lot of people have questions about his policy but there aren't that many fundamental questions, the costs are low and the prospects for success are still reasonable."

But the longer the conflict continues, Mr O'Hanlon said, and should Colonel Qaddafi decide to escalate in some unforeseen manner - "to use terrorism because he concluded he might as well" - the administration would find more and more people start to second-guess its Libya policy.