It was not difficult to notice the absence of a single military commander in the National Transitional Council delegations representing the rebels in Libya received in London on April 12 for talks with Prime Minister David Cameron and then on to Paris on April 14 to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

This absence was odd since the subject of their conversations, aside from the rebels’ failed application for political recognition and more financial assistance, is presumed to have been ways and means of winning the war and driving a defeated Muammar Qaddafi out of power.

At least one military figure should have between present for this discussion.

This week too, media coverage of the Libyan warfront underwent a tidal change. All of a sudden, the most embattled cities since February vanished from front-page reports: Misrata, Ras Lanuf, Brega and Ajdabiya dropped out of the headlines without explanation. NATO bombardments moved away from battering pro-Qaddafi military targets in those cities and switched to Tripoli and another missile blitz for short-cutting an end to the war by killing the Libyan ruler.

General Sir David Richards, Britain’s top military commander, said Sunday, May 15, that the Libyan leader would be left “clinging to power” unless NATO broadened its bombing targets to the country’s infrastructure. His pessimistic summing-up of a week of accelerated air strikes on the Libyan capital was an admission that those air strikes had so far failed in their objective and, unless the offensive was widened - which the British and French air forces cannot manage without US air force intervention - Muammar Qaddafi would have the last laugh on NATO.

This admission contrasted starkly with the confident NATO claims of progress pouring out of alliance sources. The widening gap between the hype and the reality of the Libyan war indicates the disarray in Western ranks caused, as Libya's rebel commanders are in advanced secret negotiations with Qaddafi's military chiefs.

Those talks have progressed to a point close to agreement on a truce, our sources report.

The commanders in Benghazi and various other rebel factions opted for talks when they realized they would never defeat Qaddafi's army - even with NATO air cover. They lacked both the necessary trained combat strength and weapons systems for beating Qaddafi's fighting machine which is backed and augmented by warriors from friendly tribes.

The plan to approach the rebels came from Abdullah Sanousi, head of Qaddafi's spy agency.

Hailing from a clan in rebel-held Cyrenaica in western Libya, Sanousi began using his tribal connections with the rebels two weeks ago to plant secret agents in the rebel command center of Benghazi. They came close enough to the rebel commanders to draw them into initial conversation on ways to end the fighting.

Those conversations evolved into negotiations, areas of agreement and a suspension of fighting by both camps.

The two sides got together on a smokescreen to cover their breakthrough. It came in the form of a big victory whereby the rebels drove Qaddafi's troops out of the strategic Misrata airport and capturing of large quantities of weapons including 40 Grad missiles.

Rebel commanders get a substantial cut of Libya's oil revenue

This charade was staged jointly by rebel and Qaddafi's commanders on May 11. The rebels told Sanousi's agents that they needed a big battlefield victory before accepting a truce. Qaddafi approved the stunt and let them move in and of Misrata airport with a quantity of weapons as booty.

After that, calm descended on the embattled town.

Meanwhile, Sanousi's agents clinched another point of agreement with the rebel commanders. This one not only saved them from more combat against unequal odds but also lined their pockets.

We report a secret agreement on a ceasefire in the Sirte oil basin ranging from Sabha in the south and enclosing the oil towns of Sirte, Uqayla, Bin Jawad, Ras Lanuf and Brega on the coast.

This agreement stipulates non-interference in oil production in this basin and its exporting facilities.

In return, from the estimated $100 million dollars a day earned from oil revenue, Qaddafi has agreed to shave off $10-15 million for the rebel commanders, provided the money is not spent on buying weapons or recruiting manpower for fighting the regime.

This secret accord has transformed many of the unkempt rebel fighters overnight into security personnel hired to guard the oil fields and production facilities.

Having jumped to the rebel commanders' double game, the British and French governments looked for another way to dispose of Qaddafi outside the failed battlefield. They accordingly pressed the prosecutor general of the War Crimes Court in The Hague to ask the judges to issue an international arrest warrant and summons for questioning against Qaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam and Abdullah Sanousi, the three live wires instrumental in pulling off deals with the rebel commanders for ending the Libyan war without gains for the Western coalition.

Even if the ICC judges were prevailed upon to issue these warrants, there is no force in Libya for executing them.

On May 10, Saudi King Abdullah during the Gulf Cooperation Council summit proposed inviting two Arab monarchs, Morocco's King Mohammed V and Jordan's King Abdullah II to join the GCC with full membership privileges. Neither kingdom is situated in the Persian Gulf geographic region which is represented by the GCC; nor do they have oil or gas and their economies are weak and dependent on American aid. Morocco and Jordan are furthermore not in Iran's cross-hairs, the threat of which is uppermost in the minds of Gulf rulers (along with the crisis in Yemen).

Nonetheless both sides stand to gain from the partnership.

Although they have not yet officially answered the invitation, it will be taken up willingly by the monarchs of Rabat and Amman. Their entry into the Gulf alliance would bring their armies into the mutual defense system known as Gulf Shield. It would qualify them for a military role in the ongoing Saudi-led GCC operation for propping up the Bahraini throne but, as full members, they would also enjoy the benefits of the Gulf's common market and be able to trim down their dependence on American economic and military aid.

The affluent and powerful Arab Gulf grouping, for its part, would gain extra leverage for pursuing its main goals. Attaching Jordan and Morocco would downgrade the Egyptian-dominated Arab League and bypass its decisions which must be unanimous to be binding.

Saudi Arabia, one of the Arab League's seven founding members in 1945, is now bent on expanding the Sunni Arab royalist alignment to replace the League.

Saudi Arabia also no longer depends on an American defense umbrella for its security and America can no longer rely on Riyadh to regulate its oil supply policy – and therefore its financial activities on world markets – for meeting US political, military and economic interests.

Obama initially sent two senior officials to Riyadh - US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on April 6 and by US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon on April 12 - to try and bring the Saudis back into the fold. Abdullah was not to be talked around.

Riyadh's policy reorientation

The king has created the Saudi version of a unity government by pulling together the three main royal factions on the basis of a consensus. Abdullah's own faction and the two headed by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud bin Faisal, and Saudi Interior Minister and designated crown prince, the Sudairi Prince Nayef, all agree that the kingdom has come to a parting of the ways in its historic alliance with the United States. Saudi Arabia is strong enough and rich enough to look after its security and interests without America and is at liberty to turn to other world powers for help, such as China and Russia.

The functions of Saudi intelligence have been rearranged to reflect the new coalition: Up until now, Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz ruled supreme over Saudi intelligence agencies. In recent weeks, some of his functions were transferred to the National Security Council Director, the Sudairi Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

Muqrin deals with the intelligence matters relating to Iran, Iraq, Persian Gulf states and outside the Middle East in such areas as Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Bandar is in charge of intelligence and undercover operations in the Arab countries which are in the throes of popular uprisings. Formerly a long-serving Saudi ambassador to Washington, he has also been taxed with dealing with issues arising from the dismantling of the working alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

The decision by Riyadh to shop for ballistic missiles in China instead of America fell within his remit along with the negotiations for concluding the transaction.

Bandar is running Saudi intervention against Assad in the Syrian popular uprising. When he needed the help of Saudi clandestine networks in Iraq for his Syrian project, he turned to Muqrin and they worked it out together.

In another facet of the division of labor, Bandar handles Saudi day-to-day activities for spiking America's Middle East policies, whereas Muqrin is in charge of the high-level policy interchanges between the Saudi and US intelligence services.

For Riyadh, there is no contradiction between the two functions: King Abdullah does not seek to sever all Saudi ties with the US. Indeed, however it may look, Riyadh attaches great importance to those ties, such as they are, provided only that they do not amount to a special relationship in the old format.

Neither is Saudi Arabia cutting its economy off from the US dollar although this is advocated by many in Riyadh and the Gulf emirates.

However, they part company on at least one fundamental issue: The Saudis and their GCC allies are single-minded about their determination to fight Iran's Islamic regime tooth and nail wherever its footprint is encountered in any Persian Gulf, Middle East or Arab country – even if this drive brings them into collision with Washington and sabotages President Obama’s policy objectives.

 The Saudi leadership does not trust Barack Obama’s approach to Iran, the Arab Revolt, or the Muslim world.

President Obama on the other hand, in his speech today, did not mention Saudi Arabia but condemned its "repressive military action" in Bahrain. This was the first time a US President has ever denounced a Saudi military operation.

Moscow Takes a Stand on Arab Revolts – Opposite Washington

Yesterday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a pointed warning to Washington. Despite its unrelated content, this warning was shown by its timing to be deeply relevant to the Middle East.

Failure to agree on a new missile defense shield, said the Russian president, could result in his government pulling out of the new nuclear disarmament treaty and usher in a new Cold War with the West.

He told reporters that the United States’ decision to push ahead with the European shield despite Russia’s objections will force Moscow to take responsive measures – "something that we (the Russians) would very much rather not do. We would then be talking about developing the offensive potential of our nuclear capabilities. It would be a scenario that throws us back into the Cold War era,” Medvedev said.

On the face of it, this threat underscored the warning coming from Viktor Zavarzin, chairman of the State Duma’s defense committee on May 4 that the US-Romanian deal would have a negative impact on inter-European relations and undermine the existing balance of forces and interests. He issued this warning the day after Romania announced a US missile interceptor system would be deployed at a disused Soviet airbase on its territory.

Initially Russian leaders and intelligence services were taken by surprise by the sudden upsurge of Arab popular unrest and its rapid spread and undecided how to react.

The discovery that the rulers targeted for ousters in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen, were not friends of Moscow but allies of Washington gave Moscow pause.

After a while, as they watched the Tahrir Square protesters toppling Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February, Russian leaders decided that Washington and US intelligence were the moving force behind the popular masses on the march, with the aim of transforming the old Arab regimes into a new set of rulers and political systems.

In the first stages, the Russians were not unhappy to see these autocrats go and so continued to sit on the fence.

Moscow cashes in on NATO's failure to get Qaddafi

Capitalizing on NATO's failure to oust or kill Qaddafi, Russia became the only world power to invite an official representative from Tripoli for a visit. On Tuesday, May 17 Mohammed Ahmed al Sharif, General Secretary of the World Islamic Call Society, the Libya-based group founded by Col. Qaddafi, duly arrived in Moscow.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov advised the guest that the Libyan leadership should "explicitly embrace and begin the implementation of UN Security Council resolutions (1973) in full." Lavrov was implying that Washington, London and Paris were equally bound to stick to the Security Council resolution, whose provisions did not include killing the Libyan ruler, and not just do as they pleased in Libya.

During the spread of the Arab Revolt to Syria in April, for the first time, Russia saw its military and strategic interests in jeopardy. For three years, since the end of 2008, the Russians have been building the Russian Navy's Mediterranean and Black Sea fleet headquarters at the Syrian port of Latakia. Not for a moment do they contemplate letting a democratic regime rise in Damascus that might force them to abandon this highly-prized facility.

Cozying up to Assad and Palestinian Fatah and Hamas

So when Washington finally targeted Syrian President Bashar Assad for personal sanctions this week, Medvedev retorted that Assad must be given a chance to honor his promises of reform and warned against foreign interference in the country.

On the quiet, Moscow began preparing a large shipment of advanced anti-ship Yakhont cruise missiles for Syria, the delivery of which would greatly boost Assad's standing in the Syrian army.

The Russians are also about to invite to Moscow delegations from Fatah and Hamas following the promises of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to use Moscow as the venue for their power-sharing negotiations.

 

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