Diplomats in Libya See No Hard Evidence of Challenge to Kadafi Rule

TRIPOLI, Libya —  There is a political joke that Libyans tell in private about a man who gets so angry waiting for hours in a long line to buy bread that he decides to kill the nation’s leader, Col. Moammar Kadafi.

He goes to the Aziziya Barracks where Kadafi lives in Tripoli and tells the guard at the gate, “I’m here to kill the leader.” The guard points to an even longer queue stretching around the block and replies, “You’ll have to get in line.”

Even before last week’s air attack brought Kadafi’s conflict with the United States home to Libya in a devastating way, there was ample evidence that many Libyans were fed up with the regime, largely because of chronic food shortages and other economic problems associated with the collapse of oil prices, diplomats here say.

Conditions for a Coup

Equally evident, they say, is that the Reagan Administration sought to exploit this discontent--first by provoking a confrontation with Libya over territorial waters in the Gulf of Sidra on March 24, then by ordering the April 15 attack on Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation for the bombing of a West German discotheque, killing a U.S. serviceman.

In doing so, the Administration clearly hoped to help create the conditions for a military coup in Libya by convincing dissident army elements that Kadafi’s foreign policies had become too costly.

But while there are signs that Kadafi’s regime has been deeply shaken, both militarily and politically, by the air raid, most foreign diplomats in Tripoli say they see no hard evidence yet that the colonel’s power has been seriously challenged.

“If the Americans expected a coup d’etat as a result of all this, they were wrong. It didn’t happen. Kadafi is still the leader,” said one ambassador from a nonaligned nation.

Still, speculation persists in the Libyan capital over whether Kadafi’s power has been weakened by the bombing raid and by a number of mysterious events over the next two days.

Most of the speculation focuses on a series of shooting incidents and rumors of an attempted insurrection at Tarhuna, the site of a major military base 15 miles southeast of Tripoli.

According to one report circulating here and cited in Washington, a column of dissident troops tried to march on the capital from Tarhuna the morning after the raid but was attacked by loyalist air force units.

The next day, scattered outbursts of shooting continued in Tripoli, and there were rumors of executions.

Vigorous Denials

Libyan officials, vigorously denying that anything was amiss, attributed the shooting to firing into the air at U.S. planes, which they said had returned to bomb Tarhuna and other locations late Tuesday and Wednesday.

Asked this week about reports of dissension, Information Minister Sharifeddin Faituri replied that no coup could take place in Libya because “there is no government, only the people, and the people would never rebel against themselves.”

Such pat assurances aside, a number of diplomats said they believe that some fighting did take place, most probably between dissident army troops and Kadafi’s people’s militia. However, they added that whatever happened was probably too small and too disorganized to have posed a serious threat to the regime. The capital, they noted, returned to normal life too quickly for there to have been a credible coup attempt, even a failed one.

“What we saw,” one ambassador said, was probably “the maneuvering and testing of different groups and not a coup as such.”

Indeed, many diplomats doubt that the army, despite being the most organized force in the country, is capable of mounting a coup, largely because of the many precautions that Kadafi has taken since an attempt to overthrow him was discovered and crushed in May, 1984.

After that incident, heavy munitions were taken away from the army and put under the control of Kadafi revolutionary loyalists, who permeate all levels of the armed forces and keep tabs on the activities of senior officers, diplomats said.

“The army still gets bullets for its rifles, but artillery shells and other kinds of munitions that you would need for a coup are under lock and key,” one diplomat said. “They are handed out only in times of need.”

One of the strategies behind the Reagan Administration’s attempts to provoke a confrontation with Libya may have been to create just such a need so that the army, or at least elements of it, would be in a position to attempt a coup.

Didn’t Take the Bait

If so, Kadafi seems to have avoided taking the bait. The diplomats noted that--both during the Gulf of Sidra crisis and last week’s air raid--Kadafi for the most part kept the Libyan air force on the ground and the army in the barracks.

Although some troops are said to have been moved into the capital the morning after the raid, the streets were patrolled by gun-toting militiamen and nervous-looking men believed to be from the secret police.

Still, some diplomats believe that something significant happened in the aftermath of the air strike, even if they’re not sure what. One theory being advanced by the ambassador of a country with good relations with Libya is that the military’s influence may have been strengthened by the crisis, at the expense of the paramilitary units.

While the envoy said he does not think there has been a radical shift in the balance of power between the two factions, he predicted that there may be “a trend toward a more genuinely collective and possibly more moderate form of leadership” in the future.

In theory, Libya’s leadership has been collective ever since Kadafi’s Free Officer Movement overthrew King Idris 16 years ago. Of the 12 original members in the ruling Revolutionary Command Council, only five survive--Kadafi, Maj. Abdel-Salam Jalloud, Brig. Gen. Abu Bakr Younis, commander in chief of the armed forces, Brig. Gen. Moustafa Kharoubi and Maj. Khueldi Hamedi.

Although the authority of the four under Kadafi has waxed and waned at different times, Jalloud is considered the undisputed number two and diplomats say his authority has been on the rise ever since a government reshuffle last March.

While Jalloud was the first high-level Libyan leader to appear publicly at a press conference after the raid, most diplomats say they think it is still too soon to say whether or not his prominence may be approaching Kadafi’s.

The ambassador said that a shift towards some sharing of power could be one explanation for the uncharacteristically restrained and sober tone that the Libyans have taken in the aftermath of the air strikes. It could also explain why Kadafi’s appearances since then have been mostly on television, a fact that strikes a number of diplomats here as strange, given the Libyan leader’s fondness for addressing crowds.

However, the ambassador admitted all of this is “sheer speculation” on his part and adds that it will probably take “weeks, perhaps months” for the truth to be known.

“There are no facts, only conjecture,” said another envoy.