the syrian government said two security officers die in the unrest. well here now to go behind the headlines with the news shaking up with the rest of the region is our own nic robertson who joins us. nick, it s so good to hear it in person. we ve seen many of your fine reports. we ve just come from tripoli in libya. you have spoken to rebels on the ground, officials at the highest level of the libyan government. what is your assessment now about what is taking place inside libya? is it going to remain a stalemate? and are we going to see gadhafi go? if you asked me an half an hour ago, i might have said a behind the scenes thing going on. the expert to bridge what the united states, britain, and frant wants. the rebels to take power or take some control of the country. i might have said that was a possibility, kind of bridging the gap between that position and what gadhafi himself wants and what the turkish government appears to be willing to accept
the op-ed, suzanne, is really a political document. it is statement of what their policy intentions are to the world. obviously to the libyan opposition. but it s not an action item. right? it doesn t actually advance the policy goals. it s simply articulating them. that s one of the challenges i think of having this effort to support the rebels and protect civilians, the operation by a committee, by nato, they make perfectly clear that they want to see gadhafi go. they also make perfectly clear in the op-ed that they do not believe they will not use military force to achieve that objective. so in making that point, fran, how does this have any impact on the ground? obviously it is a political document here. they spell out their goals. but gadhafi doesn t care. the rebels are losing on the ground. what can be accomplished here? what should this administration be doing moving forward? well, exactly suzanne, i agree with you completely.
international delegates met in qatar today. renewing calls for libya s moammar gadhafi to go away, to step down. but the amir of qatar is sending his own message from here in washington. he met today with the president of the united states and later he sat down with me for an exclusive interview. thank you very much for joining us. welcome to the united states. pleasure to be with you. reporter: always good to be with you. qatar is playing a leading role in trying to get rid of moammar gadhafi. how important is that to qatar that gadhafi go? actually, we are not taking gadhafi out. in our our aim, how how libyan decide their future through democracy. they are trying to do. you recognized the opposition
does that bring into question all that the u.s. has risked and spent? well, yes. he laid out the humanitarian objective, but his goal is to have gadhafi go. it is increasingly looking like without additional support for the rebels, that outcome is not possible. are there separate faculties who are calling for more involvement or less involvement? who are they? how is this all working out? yeah. the contours of this are hard to discern from the outside. there definitely is disagreement within the administration over how far to go in supporting the rebels. and you can see some of it playing out in public. you can see that the defense secretary, robert gates, appears to be more skeptical of this mission and more skeptical of expanding this mission than others in the administration. but it s just a it s just not clear, you know, the president
forces not been involved, not been engaged that hundreds of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people would have been massacred. but he can t really backtrack on what he said before this no-fly zone was implemented. that gadhafi must go. do you think he ll back away from that now or will that sentiment still be in his speech tonight? i think that sentiment will remain. and how the white house has been playing this is that there were two things that were going on here. first of all, there was the mission with the coalition forces to establish this no-fly zone in order to protect the innocent people of libya. but in addition to that, that the united states very much wants to see gadhafi go. how will they be able to push that? well, they believe that through the economic sanctions, perhaps even through those around gadhafi will apply pressure to him and eventually force him out. but that, you know, the timing as to when that will happen