Operation Oil Theft: Month 2, Week 1, Day 2.

Over the past 24 hours nothing much of note has happened in Libya.

Today (19/4/11) the leaders of the rebels Transitional National Council (TNC) met the Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini in Rome. The main purpose of the meeting to was to attempt to give legitimacy to the TNC on the international stage and to further that end they appear to have had their name upgraded to the National Transitional Council (NTC) because that sounds more permanent and more encompassing of the entire nation of Libya rather then the small area of the country the rebels actually control. The Italian Foreign Minister did also use the meeting as an opportunity to announce that the next meeting of the Libya Contact Group that was set up as part of the London Summit process will take place in Italy in early to mid-May. The sole order of business for that meeting will be to work out how best to sell oil from rebel held areas of Libya.

Also today Britain announced that it will be sending military advisers to Benghazi to assist the rebels. It appears that these advisers will be officers from conventional military regiments and will assist with tactics, communications and logistics. Britain is keen to stress that this isn't an example of Vietnam style mission creep and the advisers won't wear military uniform, provide the rebels with arms or engage in any fighting. In fact, at the moment, the advisers main mission seems to be to muscle in on what the Americans are already doing with the rebels around Al Marj.

In making the announcement of the deployment of British military advisers the British Foreign Minister, William Hague once again repeated his oft repeated claim that there can be no peace for Libya until Qaddafi goes which raises the obvious question of why not?