End of NATO role in Libya far from certain

An early end of NATO's role in Libya seems far from certain amid continuing efforts by the interim leadership to forestall an abrupt European pullout at the end of the U.N. mandate next week. NATO diplomats also indicated a final suspension of the alliance's air campaign over Libya by the U.N. deadline of Monday might be allowed to slip. The interim ruling council wants NATO to stay till the end of the year -- in what form or size remains yet undefined. But the Libyan leaders' argument the security situation on the ground was far from stable didn't require persuasion, officials said. Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council, said the alliance's presence would help deter people loyal to slain ousted leader Moammar Gadhafi from regrouping and threatening security. Jalil appealed to NATO while in Qatar for the first international planning conference on Libya since Gadhafi's death last week. NATO ministers have said consultations over the future of the alliance's operations in Libya will continue with the interim government leaders before the Monday U.N. deadline for the end of operations. NATO and European military forces are active in Libya in more ways than the U.N. resolutions have specified. In addition to military forces and advisers, Britain, France and other NATO countries have also dispatched dozens of business entrepreneurs as the advance guard for securing contracts for post-conflict reconstruction and realignment of Libya to the outside world. Most of the business delegations have either requested security arrangements or have arrived in Libya with security teams in place, delegates attending a Libya conference in London said. Key areas of economic, financial and monetary reorganization in Libya are still in the preliminary stages of reforms and all personnel involved with those efforts want NATO assurances they'll be safe while at work on those projects. However, NATO cannot realistically furnish guarantees of personal safety of EU and other alliance citizens while thousands of marauding militia remain at large, vast regions remain mined with live ordnance and decommissioning experts struggle to keep track of an unregulated array of sophisticated weapons in private hands. Both the EU and NATO are also in the early stages of complex formalities related to the release of Libya's frozen assets. The country's oil installations, production and export facilities, damaged in NATO's air campaigns, require work that can only be carried out in secure conditions. The pace of the restoration of Libya's oil production capacity, damaged in NATO air raids, will also determine global crude oil supplies and price, the London Center for Energy Studies said in its monthly oil report. NATO is unlikely to allow restoration of Libyan oil capacity to drag on unsupervised.