Operation Oil Theft: Month 2, Week 1, Day 3.

Following Britain's announcement yesterday (19/4/11) France and Italy have today (20/4/11) announced that they will also be sending military advisers to Libya to help the rebels. Like the British advisers both of the ten man teams will be made up of officers from conventional military regiments and will not be wearing military uniform. There is no word yet if they will supply the rebels with weapons or engage in combat. I'm not sure about the Italians but the French advisers most certainly will be supplying the rebels with both weapons and weapons training as today's announcement is merely the formalisation of something that's been going on for a couple of weeks.

Without going into too much detail one the weapons that has been turning up the hands of the Libyan rebels is the MILAN anti-tank weapons system. Basically this is a wire guided missile launcher that is much more advanced then the RPG-7 and requires a lot of training to use effectively. Not only that but the ammunition, which costs around US$25,000 per shot, must be supplied in special factory sealed tubes which actually form part of the launcher. As a result there are only a handful of factories world wide, all of them in NATO countries, that are capable of producing MILAN ammunition and all of them are licensed by Euromissile, the French manufacturer. Therefore it would be impossible for the rebels to be supplied with MILAN's without the French government giving their permission.

Also today it has emerged that the Libyan Foreign Minister has indicated that the Libyan government might be prepared to discuss Muammer Qaddafi leaving office. Although this is being heralded in Britain as a sign of cracking amid the Libyan government it actually represents a hardening of their position. Part of the African Union ceasefire which the Libyan government accepted but the rebels rejected included plans for Muammer Qaddafi to hand over power to his son, Saif Qaddafi who would oversee the countries transition to democracy. So the fact that the Libyan government are now only prepared to discuss the idea is something of a step backwards.