Libyan Government Forces Take Zawiya

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MELISSA BLOCK, host:

The regime of Moammar Gadhafi embarked on a kind of victory tour today, taking journalists into the city of Zawiya to show it is now firmly under government control. Zawiya is west of the Libyan capital, Tripoli. It's been the scene of fierce fighting as resistance forces took on Gadhafi troops.

David Kirkpatrick of The New York Times was on that tour of Zawiya today, and he told me what he saw.

Mr. DAVID KIRKPATRICK (Correspondent, The New York Times): There were sort of two parts to it. There was the devastation, which is, you know, devastation: devastated city, a lot of shelling, walls collapsed, shell holes everywhere, the mosque destroyed, the top of the mosque gone, the speaker where they announce the call to prayer dangling by a wire thread and behind the mosque a crumpled up bunch of old burned-out cars, other vehicles, maybe a tank. I mean, it was devastation.

But what was really weird was that for the arrival of us, foreign journalists escorted out to the city by the Gadhafi government, they had apparently, my guess is, imported a bunch of Gadhafi supporters.

There were hundreds of people waving green flags and celebrating, milling around the place where the rebels had previously buried their dead in Martyr Square. There were as many as 20 graves of rebels who had died defending the city. Now, all that had been bulldozed. You can see the bulldozer tracks, and this green flag-waving crowds chanting, you know, God and Moammar is all Libya needs, were all sort of just milling around and dancing on top of cars.

And when I - we would talk to them and say, you know what, it looks like there were some violence here. Despite all the evidence, several said, oh no, oh no, no real violence. The city had been taken over by terrorists, and thankfully, the army has rid the city of terrorists. That was surreal.

One of our government minders on the way back to our hotel here called it extraterrestrial. He's not a native English speaker, but it was -that's aptly descriptive.

BLOCK: Could you get any sense of what has happened to all of those people who were, as we gathered, launching fierce protests against the Gadhafi regime from Zawiya? I mean, those who were not killed, what's happened to them?

Mr. KIRKPATRICK: You know, that's a good question, and it is not a very fun thing to think about. We were - I was there 12 days ago, and there were thousands, maybe 10,000 people, cheering in the square and saying, you know, free, free Libya; free, free Libya. And they were, you know, all different stripes of people: professors and doctors and lawyers and people working in the oil industry. And they were accompanied by a good portion of defected soldiers with tanks and antiaircraft guns that the Libyans like to fire horizontally at each other and machineguns.

It was a fortified rebel-held town in full celebration. And since that time, I would say about seven days, seven about, about seven or eight days ago, we started getting phone calls from people I met that day saying, you know, the world has going to help us. Something has got to be done. There's a massacre going on.

And every day, the Gadhafi security forces would attack again to some extent or another with tanks and antiaircraft guns and artillery and machineguns, and they were doing house-to-house searches.

And I don't know where all of those 10,000 people or 5,000 or whatever it was, I don't know where they've all gone. I don't know if they retreated from the city or if they were hiding out someplace. All we saw was the square.

Whenever we started to leave the central square, burly guys with machineguns and mismatched camouflage uniforms would herd us back in.

BLOCK: As you drove into Zawiya today, David, did it seem like a ghost town to you? Was there any sign of life going on?

Mr. KIRKPATRICK: We saw a lot of soldiers on the way in, some of them sort of camping out, eating, some of them with their machineguns by the side of the road. I didn't see any other organic life, now that you mention it, you know, open cafes, restaurants, doors, people going in and out of apartment buildings. I didn't see any of that.

BLOCK: Now that you're back in Tripoli, I wonder if you can step back and think about what the lesson is of Zawiya for the rest of Libya. We've heard broad claims from the Gadhafi regime that people in the east, we're coming. You know, the model of what happened in Zawiya is what's going to happen to you rebels in the east.

Mr. KIRKPATRICK: You know, this is not a good day for the rebels, as best I can tell. In addition to what we saw in Zawiya, it appears that they are in disarray on the eastern front.

And the thing about this is that the country, it's a funny kind of a country. It's a tribal country. It doesn't have much civil society. It doesn't have really any institutions of government. There's almost no government at all.

And the tribes, my best sense is that they've got their finger to the wind. I think even the large tribes that have been incorporated into the Gadhafi government, the Wafalla, the Qaddadfa, his own tribe, the Margaha, they have not always agreed with him and have sometimes broken with him.

And that could happen again, but I think it would only happen if it looked like he was going to lose. And right now, it doesn't look like he's going to lose.

BLOCK: I've been talking with David Kirkpatrick of The New York Times. He's in Tripoli and was in the city of Zawiya today. David, thanks very much.

Mr. KIRKPATRICK: Thank you.

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

And President Obama addressed the topic of Libya again today. At a news conference, Mr. Obama said the world is watching.

BLOCK: As for taking any action, including military, the president repeated that all options are on the table, including a no-fly zone.

President BARACK OBAMA: NATO will be meeting on Tuesday to consider a no-fly zone. And we've been in discussions with both Arab countries, as well as African countries, to gauge their support for such an action.

SIEGEL: And the president stressed the importance of maintaining an international coalition. He pledged to weigh carefully any decision to use U.S. forces.

BLOCK: President Obama said: We are slowly tightening the noose on Gadhafi.

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