Arab unrest: perspectives - XX

Are the two sides in Libya at an equal stalemate? Sir David Frost poses this question to Carl Bildt, the foreign minister of Sweden-a country very much outside Nato, but a highly valuable part of the coalition against Qadhafi as it provides "qualitative and highly sophisticated assets" to the Western military alliance's operations.
Bildt, who has recently caused a considerable controversy with his remarks that decision by the US to withdraw its planes from bombing missions has had a "sizeable" impact on the operations, replies: "...you can probably say...they [the Qadhafi forces] are the more trained and they are the more well-armed. At the same time on the political level, I mean we have to assume that they are worried by the fact that they have a sizeable portion of population against them. So from the political point of view [of] Benghazi and TNC [Transitional National Council], they have the advantage.. . .Then on the international side of course we should not forget the effect of sanctions. The fact that sanctions will be harder and harder, they will hit, and they will over time make it very difficult for Qadhafi to retain any sort of semblance of stability, any sort of semblance of control over the parts of Libya he's still maintaining his grip on".
Frost asks Bildt: "You are in a very very important and central position of knowing exactly what's going on. Are you satisfied with progress at the moment or has it been slower than you would have wished?"
His answer: "It's nearly three months since Revolution, Rebellion or whatever you prefer to call it started in Benghazi. I have to confess to you that I believed at that time that it would be over in a week or two. The regime would crack up and it would be an advanced transitional stage by now. It has taken a longer time. There's no doubt about that. There were those people who might have believed that a couple of days' air campaign would do it. I really didn't believe that. I do think that you have to look at the time perspective. But if you add up the different components, I'm quite certain that we'll have the desired outcome. If you are asking about how long it will take, I wouldn't know. I would be prepared for quite sometime yet to come".
In response to a question whether Qadhafi's declaration of cease-fire would be enough to bring some form of peace or whether the end of this procedure has to be really the departure of Qadhafi from power, he states: "Well, it has to be the departure of Colonel Qadhafi from power. But there might be a cease-fire before that. But that cease-fire will have to be verified. He will have to withdraw his forces from quite a number of areas he has been occupying....he doesn't have any future in the politics of Libya".
In answer to a question whether there is a likelihood of sending in troops, he says: "I don't see that is happening". According to him, the military pressure is highly critical. Then sanctions are degrading him from other perspectives, then political messages are degrading his power base. "In some point in time, his power will crack and break... ."
In reply to a question whether rebels should be helped by allies through arms and whether or not that would be a logical way of speeding up process of resolution vis-à-vis Qadhafi, he says: "There are different interpretations of the UN resolution... .But even sending in arms we should not make any illusions. They need heavy arms. In order to operate heavy arms they need training for quite some time. Sending in heavy weapons does not sort out the thing. That's why I'm stressing different components of our strategy. And we must have an element of patience. This might not be resolved tomorrow. But it will be resolved in the way we are seeking to resolve it and I'm very confident of that".
Answering a question whether the coalition needs more planes, he says: "Perhaps. That is for the military authorities to judge. In my opinion, we need primarily to send the signal that we're going to go. We have the will, we have the patients and we have the determination to continue. The military operation will be there whatever time it takes. The sanctions will continue to hit even harder. The political messages will be coming. I think that might at some point in time cause the combination of all of these things an implosion in Tripoli... .Time is clearly not on the side of Qadhafi".
Also speaking at Al Jazeera, but at a different talk show, Steve Clemons, the director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, gives a rather different perspective. According to him, the consensus that developed against Qadhafi internationally has an expiration date. "And if he survives beyond that expiration date, you will see the international consensus come apart. That puts the rebels and the whole effort very much in doubt. It will make Britain, France and the US look much more impotant than they would like to look."