international news live from r.t. here moscow is just turned eleven pm and nine pm in tripoli and so to our breaking news this hour the fast moving developments there in libya rebel say that they now control most of tripoli and have taken libya state t.v. channels off there and some reports suggest opposition fighters have been looting private houses to a good half his sons enough to be in rebel hands for the third having escaped house arrest opposition leaders say a large number of their fighters have been killed reports of heavy fighting around gadhafi compound but the whereabouts of the colonel are unknown nato insists it will continue combat air patrols until the government forces surrender from a night of chaos in the capital crowds have been seen in tripoli central square waving revolutionary flags. or journalistically missile whose founder and chairman of online newspaper the voltaire network is in the rixos hotel in tripoli and told me earlier that nato forces are doing everything to back up the rebels.

leader also. from the u.s. so there is only from the listing side you know. the e.u. is really. only seem to try to keep it all those inside. so. to protect against the u.s. . surrounded by good rights. to prevent the entrance for. me to lose a lot of. ground to be sure. those would be called. for. fun.

he too is booming to please choose him to roosevelt. should be curtailed or do we leave you to shoot everybody mistreat them after that only you have to go to the so-called rebels and told indiscrete. there are reports of guns on the libya tunisia board room thousands of libyans are heading in that direction at the moment to flee the scene as fighting between pro and anti gadhafi forces a military correspondent brianna keilar is at the border there has been a rather intense fighting reported missing the true khadafi and avg rebel forces about fifteen kilometers from the border with tunisia in as it's out of the much the border between libya and tunisia have been in sort of a degree as a plate over the past five months people have been trying to escape leave because they have out of syria like you know about what's going on to control it especially now when the libyan forces are literally attacking just going over out of their way

over tripoli i found to get even more confusing is now people who president to reside near the border on the beacon side say that over the past couple of weeks here have been reported clashes between on the identified arm down arms of spending including two border guards the ohss say that. there have been a sightings of numerous heavy vehicles loaded with armed people reportedly before you leave the input it was a license plate so it's hard to identify exactly who those people were now as in the clashes which were free earlier today between we can border patrols and they are just like libyan government here have not been reported and. just watch he says ortiz to say that they believe some of the gunmen on the inside might have injured or wounded. the leaders of france italy and the u.k.

of all announced they'll be holding individual talks for the leaders of the libyan transitional government that's next week well let's cross to r.t. daniel bushell he's got all the latest details on this daniel joining us there in paris now what's been the reaction in france and the e.u. to the latest events in libya daniel the french president has spoken to the rebel leader. by telephone on monday and announced that he's invited him for talks on wednesday france has said that libya is a potentially rich country but it needs support and aid to rebuild in fact paris is behaving as if it's all over now that the war is finished and the fact in fact officially announced its military mission in libya is complete but experts who do express fears that the division is between the rebels themselves now that they like a common enemy and get their feet if gadhafi has indeed now gone maybe there is further violence as those splits between the rebels are exposed in brussels

diplomats and analysts saying that the united states has really taken a backseat here see an opportunity to take a leading role of the e.u. says that much hard work is ahead and is prepared to work with the new leadership of libya and nato says that it will continue with its mission which is to protect civilians and. i did that nato is doing that it is protecting civilians on the ground and. these talks that are coming up to tell us more about the subject matter of those talks what's anticipated. french defense minister says the talks will find a road map to the future of libya that's necessary to avoid the country slipping back into civil war to find common ground and force through the officially approved toys between european nations and the new government now it's in these leaders

silvio berlusconi has also announced that he will be meeting the rebel leaders now here are saying that this may be to also lobby for western oil corporation for of oil corporations for example we know that any had large contracts with. before the civil war and was accused of corruption in order to gain massive contracts in that country daniel thanks very much indeed that's the latest from our correspondent daniel bushell there in paris well to discuss the situation in libya now i'm joined live by eric margolis he's a war correspondent columnist and author from toronto in canada eric thanks very much for being with us here on r.t. but now the u.n. mandate for nato military mission expires next month the question is will nato stay on beyond its mandate do you think. the wording of the man changed to make it a more humanitarian. nabeel is this

a lot of money. and the lure of oil. is over or maybe it was committed to staying in libya the long stick nevertheless also the fact that the rebels are made up of what tribal factions sectarian factions it doesn't necessarily mean just because the rebels or one that we're going to see a peaceful future there in libya doesn't know or the only thing that we can safely say is that it looks like it's a very confusing situation for quite a long time for example oh we don't know where to go for years. a barracks in downtown tripoli where i interviewed him once years ago. even. left the hiding but the problem is that the this so-called transitional government in benghazi a traditional flow of tripoli libya was more or less created by the french and

a handful of its members exiles from western oriented. the west for a long time but the other half for its majority are islamic militants and so they're very strange bedfellows and at this point i don't see how. interesting you say that you've actually met gadhafi and you interviewed him what do you make of his resolve or some may say his tipping if he hasn't been seen in public nobody knows where he is at the moment what's he going for at the moment what is his plan do you think it will be that he's been you know the city he's president reagan described as the mad dog of the middle east that he seemed to be very eccentric and very odd but he's also crazy like a fox because he's survived in power forty two years. kill him. so he's obviously very weary. but he has now the fight

you know and i wouldn't dismiss our hand the fact that he's a just. clownish of boasting about aids is not only skate routes open maybe some here is a black africa but he or he may take to the desert is a very large country and trying rally some kind of guerrilla war against what he has this is a modern colonial reoccupation and then there's an interesting sidebar you know the countries that are most prominent in the reoccupation of libya are france italy and britain which are all of the the former colonial powers of the region who used to compete with. other for influence and resource now you're a war correspondent you're not a stranger to these sort of things you just mentioned the scenario where gadhafi could escape perhaps do you think then the media is jumping to the conclusion too quickly that it is all over now in the good daffy's days are numbered or do you think that he really could survive well he could i really can't tell you now where

they're. now. president obama's going to make. it work hours which made. sure we just don't know but i know in your be taken to leisurely look. it's three sons. including the fire. without putting up a fight. yes it's a park and then again we hear that one of them is escaped with the help of lawyers so that's interesting it doesn't necessarily mean that they are in safe custody no one hears that there's a loyalist counter-offensive going on and you know who the wyly downfield little these people into tripoli and his tribesmen are going to school ground. really you know this war is being fought by nato it's not. all right ok eric just finally this war is being fought by nato presumably they'll say if it's all over very soon it's

won by nato but is that going to lead to the establishment of democracy in libya something the u.s. and the u.s. so vocal about all i would be willing to bet a lot of money. a long way away from seeing anything like democracy where you're more like an armchair you want time eric margolis always good to hear what you have to say thanks so much for your time war correspondent columnist and author i live in toronto in canada thank you. news of the rebel advancement into tripoli was greeted warmly by investors around the world sparking an immediate drop in oil prices and analysts say now that the most important question is just how much stability the new government will bring something i've just been talking to eric margolis about well r.t. sara first has the latest on this. what we see really is a knee jerk reaction in the oil markets to the events in tripoli we see in the oil prices he said looking almost three dollars in festus thinking that there are some

oil production could resume shortly now it's least foreign minister has confirmed that the italian oil company any has sent workers back into libya they've led the way really in sending their workers back now what we've seen is the other big oil companies such is the b.p. have actually passed on the fence at the moment they're waiting to see exactly how this plays out what's going to happen if the coming days and weeks we've heard from the information manager of the libyan rebel oil is that they said they don't have any problems with western countries within companies italy france the u.k. but they could have political issues with countries like brazil china and russia now if that's to be the case then that could certainly be a major setback those countries you could see the loss of billions of dollars worth of oil contracts i was speaking to one of the editors today a very large newspaper here in italy and he's been following the situation very

closely and how he described this was like a chess game now between the oil companies between the front countries on the ground there is still an extremely confusing time in libya what's happening in tripoli now there is still a lot left the store thout and so certainly by no means is this at the moment but that does spell the potential problems for those countries that libya's revolution had pointed out that amongst the market that there will be output in oil production restored some point in the near future in libya so forth reporting there and altering the list of things the struggle for libyan oil is the real bottom line of the whole nato operation. it's simply an insurgency being supported covertly by u.s. financed arm shipments into the rebels and in order to simply carve up the oil fields and get it into western hands rather than into libyan state hands which khadafi held firmly to that i think the real underlying issue in this whole nato

bombing of libya i think it suits some of the western oil interests especially the british and the french who are fighting like and like purana is over grabbing the most you see oil fields for them for their own companies that it suits them to have chaos because and they can control the terms of oil exploitation much better and ever since and it's been the most brazen violation of international law that we've seen it's so incredible to me that. the international media doesn't debate some of the some of the legal aspects of this and i think what what libya's going to face after that is a period of prolonged chaos nobody knows the outcome this is as i said at the beginning this is tribe against tribe this is not democracy against a toilet aryanism. and across the atlantic president obama said despite the rebel advance into tripoli the outcome of the main battle remains fluid he's got a challenge joins me live now from washington gannett what else did we hear from

the white house today. well bill washington a key player in the fight for tripoli says they are in close contact with the rebels leadership and that the u.s. will support a peaceful transition to democracy president obama while on vacation has made the statement this monday in the wake of dramatic developments in tripoli over the weekend that were really far from peaceful again he was talking about what a terrible dictator could be was what a great job nato has done he called for the leave us to support the transitional national council that's a body that backed by western allies as we know he once again said that billions of dollars in frozen leave in assets will go to the council to help them restore order in the country that's been torn apart by the civil war but before the rebels made made it to the central square in tripoli to celebrate the city's expensive nato bombing it's obvious to everyone that the regime is falling apart with enormous help and their air strikes we've seen the rebels cheering all night that they are

much reminded of what we saw in cairo when hosni mubarak was ousted but let's not forget that up until now the people in egypt are not governed by those they chose as their leaders egypt's just one example of a revolution that ended up with people not getting what they were fighting for and then leave you know those who took over and that is the transitional national council of now being chosen by the levy and people get that council is being recognized as legitimate power in the view of by all the allies that it's been helping. many libyans are outraged by the fact that foreign powers of the century made those very important choices for them nato has been in there. with the mission over the last six months the strike strikes a lot of criticism they killed many innocent civilians while the goal of the mission was to protect civilians nato was facing a deadline in september when a resolution full strikes had to be renewed and given all of the violations that

have taken place it would be very hot. to get everyone on board for extending the campaign. well thanks very much indeed for that gunn of us live in washington well let's get more analysis from the director of the antiwar coalition brian becker he's also in washington d.c. brian thanks very much indeed for being with us here in r.t. but as you just heard it said that nato has done a great job it looks like the people's wishes about to come true there in libya so the operation carried out by nato well their position has been vindicated doesn't it. well it depends what the what the mission was if it was to protect civilians it certainly hasn't been vindicated thousands of civilians have died the united states and nato forces have dropped seven thousand five hundred bombing missions in libya just in the last month alone this is a nato war there may be libyan soldiers fighting as part of the rebel force but there are commando units from britain and france that are the real leaders just to

put this in perspective the gross domestic product of libya is one tenth the size of the pentagon's annual military budget this is a david and goliath battle between powers the united states britain and france the old colonizers and slavers of africa wanting to put into place in libya a government that's not necessarily more democratic or more peaceful or more freedom loving but that will be a puppet and not a partner or a puppet regime in this oil rich country no matter how one could be critical about nato involvement let's look at the situation in the near future the country's not going to be with men who are euphoric they could be carrying weapons that could indeed be lawlessness there do you think it's right therefore that nato should continue beyond its mandate continue beyond september and act in a humanitarian way because after all the country could be lawless couldn't it after this. well you can make that argument with a certain degree of logic but if you look at the situation in a different way if you look at it from the point of view of the nato forces that

liberate least. then provoked and stimulated in the civil war that ended up destroying big parts of the country and then bomb huge parts of the infrastructure knowing that that infrastructure would be later rebuild probably by western corporations making lots of money you have to then strip nato of any positive performance in in a post khadafi libya i think in fact if nato stays they will have noble humanitarian sounding sort of excuses and pretext for their role but ultimately it's the dominate this country remember before he came to power in one thousand sixty nine the us had the wheelus air force base the british had two major air bases in libya it wasn't just oil it's about military bases it's about control of what was a vital u.s. and british fear of influence so how do you post gadhafi libya the vision that the e.u. and the us of settles. well i think you could look to iraq and see what's the

track record in terms of what really might happen in the us stoked ethno sectarian conflicts geographic conflicts in order to kind of carry out a divide and rule strategy i think they know very well that the that the national transition council could not have come to power except for this amazing amount of military operations from the nato forces and they hope that this entity will do what they want them to do what will that be it will be to give contracts that rebuild the country to western corporations to denationalize or find some way to hand over libya's vast oil resources to those western oil corporations in other words a kind of neo colonialism colonialism but packaged in a different way i don't think that looks very good just finally what do you think is next for gadhafi will he face the international criminal court in the hague or do you think it should be left to the libyan people. well we don't know yet what

the final outcome is i mean there are reports. we're getting are sketchy we will know i think within hours or certainly within days what the final outcome is the international criminal court is something of a joke only the western powers use it to target those who they determine must be demonized before being occupied and before having their governments overthrown the same western powers who perhaps as we know invaded iraq and killed hundreds of thousands of iraqis they never stand in the dock at the hague or in the international criminal court the u.s. will use it as it has in the past in order to gain credibility for its invasion and occupation or in this case bombing campaign we don't know what you will do but it's not just us at the hague. to hear what you have to say thanks for telling brownback joining us live in washington d.c. thank you. were members of the european union and once again called gadhafi to relinquish power but you four are over the ongoing assault on tripoli is fading replaced by concern that the new government may not have the authority needed to

bring and maintain peace with ben it is following the reaction force from london. the prime minister david cameron is very confident that this is the beginning of the end he said that he is on his way out he's recently just been on the phone to the leader of the national transitional council mustapha. stressing the need for a smooth peaceful and that's going to transition to this new democratic leadership at the same time as all of that he did say that nato forces mandate for being in the country expires in just one month will stay there for as long as it takes so quite an open ended response to that question if there is some uncertainty tempering the jubilation around the rebels' presence in tripoli the other uncertainty is over the question of the frozen assets britain has said it's prepared to release them for the building a new infrastructure in the country and stabilize the there is a month and here's who those will go to and how they'll be used also uncertainty around the e.u. sanctions a spokesperson for the e.u.

foreign affairs committee has said for the time being will remain in place over libya and will be lifted when the time is right and finally get down to where reese he. is still unknown and britain stance has changed once again about on that issue prime minister saying this morning that his future will be in the hands of the rebels themselves to begin with when the campaign started six months ago he was saying that gadhafi must go then they changed tack about a month ago saying that he can stay in the country so long as he stands down but living in exile now there seems to be washing their hands of it once again saying that it will be in the hands of the rebels in libya potentially precarious state this post dictatorship limbo and we've been here of course before with iraq when mistakes were made and like iran libya sits on a great deal of oil wealth so that really complicates the issue considerably unlike iraq however there is this foundation for

a new government already in place that is recognized around europe they already have a diplomatic mission here in london but already the british press is quite skeptical of their ability to govern democratically saying that there are there is potential for infighting with a lot of interest there. bennett reporting there from london in britain sworn to stand by the fractured transitional government in the days and weeks ahead but self interest may be the driving force behind london's promises well that's according to john reese of the stop the war coalition. got rid of gadhafi and nobody is going to shed any tears for that brutal dictatorship but i imagine that what most people in libya don't want is to swap the rule of gadhafi for that of the western powers and part of the problem here is of course the way in which he has fallen today has been the single biggest day of nato air operations in the entire history of this intervention so it's quite clear that the t.n.c.

will come to power as the proxy use of the western powers and the western powers don't do this without asking for a payback and they will be asking for a payback if i were a libyan and i were listening to david cameron's speech or if i had listened to what nato said earlier that they want to assist the transition i mean heaven knows what a military alliance supposedly assisting a transition to democracy is all about i would take those remarks as more threat than a promise that is a direct threat by david cameron that they will use their military and economic weight to gain what they want out of any new government in libya the only chance of unity for the t.n.c. is that they do what most libyans i believe want them to do and that is to say that the future of libya is to be decided by libyans and by nobody else but they do not require the systems of nato that they do not require the assistance of the major powers that they do not want their resources exploited by western oil companies

that could be a point of unification but if they continue down the line of competing amongst themselves for who has the ear who has the greatest the greatest sway with the major powers then i really i really believe that that will further divide them. well that brings us now to twenty seven half minutes past the obvious that with a recap of the latest headlines and they just developments in libya shortly stay with us live here in moscow.

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if you just. captured your position but one is reportedly the help of. opposition supporters rejoice. the skeptics point to be. full of the form of egypt's to. officials from libya's new government as the transitional council several nations as favorites for. the latest developments there in the false move in place then the middle east and of course meanwhile stay with us for a debate show that's coming on.