Libyan Ruler Muammar Qaddafi may have been bluffing when he said "The Libyan people are capable one day of taking the battle to Europe and the Mediterranean [chiefly Italy and France]" if NATO continues its air strikes, and …"throwing ourselves on Europe like swarms of locusts or bees" to attack "your homes, your offices, your families [who] would become legitimate military targets because you have transformed our offices, headquarters, homes and children into military targets which you say are legitimate."

But the threat he relayed by audio to a huge pro-government rally in Tripoli Friday, July 1,may not be just a scare tactic but his last warning for NATO to abandon its large-scale, all-out military bid to kill or oust him, which debkafile's military sources report is in its last stage of planning.
The coming coup de grace, expected in the next couple of weeks, is the hottest topic of discussion in the corridors of power and high-level military and intelligence get-togethers in London, Paris, Brussels, Moscow, Oslo, The Hague and Rome. It is expected to start in a couple of weeks with French and British troop landings on Libyan soil, to be followed in its last stages of by American forces.

Despite US President Barack Obama's denials of direct military intervention in the Libya war – "American forces are playing only a limited support role in the NATO operation" – US sources made the following disclosure Thursday June 30: "The US Air Force and Navy aircraft are still flying hundreds of strike missions over Libya."

Qaddafi views France's supply of weapons to Libyan rebels as the opening shot of the final act in the scenario for removing him. He is convinced now that NATO will not be thrown off course by diplomacy or political concessions – even his recent offer of UN-supervised elections to decide whether the Libya voter wants him to stay or go.

If nothing else avails for his survival, debkafile's military and counter-terror sources report that Qaddafi has the options and resources for making good on his threat before or after being forced out of power.
He could retire to the Sahel Desert, the desolate belt running north of the Sahara and stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, and mount terrorist operations against Europe from there. He would operate from a sanctuary with the Tuareg tribes, which have links with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb – AQIM and many of whom have been fighting for him as mercenaries.
Incidentally, Western anti-terror agencies have never revealed that the July 7, 2005 London transport attacks, in which 56 people died and more than 700 were injured, were backed logistically by - and received their explosive devices from - al Qaeda's Tuareg followers.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Qaddafi was a notoriously proactive anti-West terror-master and facilitator who sanctioned such operations as the blowing up of the Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish village of Lockerbie in which 250 people died; and the La Belle discothèque explosion in Berlin which killed two US army sergeants.

Among the European and Asian extremists who were trained and supported by Libya were the radical left-wing Red Brigades' Italian, German and Japanese offshoots and the Irish Republican Army, the IRA.

Libyan agents also took a hand in the East German external intelligence branch's covert operations in Europe.
Some of the Libyan agents employed in this far-flung campaign of violence are still idle.

It is not known whether or not Qaddafi has decided to reactivate his terror machine which almost certainly retains sleeper cells in parts of Europe – either to pre-empt or to avenge the massive NATO end-game for his rule.

Saturday, July 2, in another bid to avert the offensive, the African Union announced Qaddafi had agreed to transitional negotiations between government and rebel representatives in Addis Ababa under the AU aegis. They would discuss "a consensual and inclusive transition" via an interim government and elections.

This initiative left the way open for Qaddafi to seek refuge on the continent but not to be removed by force.

But the Libyan ruler gave up on the NATO powers accepting any diplomatic solutions to the conflict after his own negotiations with rebel commanders in early June and the truce accord they reached (which was first revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly 493 on May 20) were roundly rejected by NATO which urged the rebels to fight on.

In Madrid Saturday, July 2, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saidthe United States and Spain won't let Qaddafi's threats of retaliatory attacks in Europe deter their mission to protect Libyan civilians and force him to leave power. "Instead of issuing threats, he should be putting the well-being and interests of his own people first," she said. "He should step down from power."

Qaddafi has often been called unpredictable. On June 12, Russian chess master Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, having just played a game against the embattled Libyan ruler, warned that he was capable of catching his opponents off-guard with surprise moves.
But in his war with NATO, he has just laid his pieces out on the table.