Arab countries appealed to the United Nations to impose a no-fly zone on Libya as government troops backed by warplanes fought to drive rebels from remaining strongholds in the west of the country.
Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa said the League, which met in Cairo today, had decided that ‘serious crimes and great violations’ committed by the government of Muammar Gaddafi against his people had stripped it of legitimacy.
The League's call for a no-fly zone could provide the regional endorsement that NATO has said is needed for any military action to curb Gaddafi.
The League also said it had opened contacts with the Libyan rebel leadership.
The United States backed the Arab League's call for the UN Security Council to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, and Washington said it was preparing for ‘all contingencies'.
‘We welcome this important step by the Arab League, which strengthens the international pressure on Gaddafi and support for the Libyan people,’ the White House said in a statement.
Events on the ground, however, are moving more quickly than international diplomatic efforts.
Pro-Gaddafi troops unleashed an assault on the town of Misrata, the only rebel outpost between the capital and the eastern front around the oil town of Ras Lanuf.
It took a week of repeated assaults by government troops, backed by tanks and air power, to crush the uprising in Zawiyah, a much smaller town 50km (30 miles) west of Tripoli.
While the death toll in Zawiyah is unknown, much of the town was destroyed, with buildings around the main square showing gaping holes blown by tank rounds and rockets.
Gaddafi's forces bulldozed a cemetery where rebel fighters had been buried.
Further east, Gaddafi's troops pushed insurgents out of Ras Lanuf, a day after making an amphibious assault on the oil port and pitting tanks and jets against rebels armed with light weapons and machineguns mounted on pick-up trucks.
Dozens of soldiers waved posters of Gaddafi and painted over rebel graffiti at a deserted housing complex for oil industry workers as foreign journalists arrived from Tripoli on a government-run visit to the recaptured city.
Black smoke billowed from an oil storage facility near the refinery east of the town.
President Barack Obama said the US and its allies were ‘tightening the noose’ on Gaddafi and that he had not taken any options off the table, a hint at military action.
But there is little enthusiasm in Washington for enforcing a no-fly zone without United Nations backing.
European Union leaders meeting in Brussels yesterday sidestepped a British and French call to draw up a UN Security Council resolution to authorise a no-fly zone over Libya.
Instead, they called for a three-way summit with the African Union and the Arab League to discuss the crisis further.
