ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: DEBKAfile
03March2011 9:15amEST
GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Barring changes in the military situation, Muammar Qaddafi looked Wednesday, March 2, as though he had averted his regime's immediate danger of collapse by dint of a successful counter-offensive against rebel forces. His prospects had strikingly improved since 
Saturday, Feb. 26, when President Barack Obama told him to leave and the UN Security Council clamped down sanctions on his regime.
During the day, the regime's armored forces and commandos supported by the Libyan Air Force recaptured parts of Brega, Libya's refinery city and supplier of the country's benzene, and sections of the Bay of Sirte town of Ajdabiya. DEBKAfile's military sources say the loss of Brega will cause severe fuel and refined oil shortages in rebel-held Cyrenaica in the east.
Saif al-Islam, who has been running his father Muammar Qaddafi's propaganda campaign since the uprising began more than two weeks ago (Feb. 17), told the French Le Figaro confidently on Wednesday: "It's true that it's a bit messy in the east, a few hundred people died there, but within two days everything will be back in order."
As his counter-offensive went forward, Qaddafi himself addressed a public event in Tripoli covered by state television, looking relaxed and self-confident.
The reverses suffered by the rebels were implicit in their appeal to the West Tuesday night, March 1 for military intervention, when a few hours earlier they rejected foreign troops coming to their aid. (read full report)
