".. Neither side seems capable of moving the ball down the field.."

"... Some of the rebels have been crying out for leadership. The revolutionary government's de facto finance minister, Ali Tarhouni, was confronted by civilian members of the rebel militia demanding to know who was going to take charge of military strategy on the ground after claiming that there are 1,000 trained fighters among the rebels..... And from this weekend it is not who is fighting that is the question but who will no longer be fighting, with the US announcement that its warplanes will no longer carry out bombing raids. Even before the American decision, the number of air strikes, mandated by the UN security council resolution 1973, had been sharply diminishing. ....The slowing of the coalition mission has only helped to contribute to a growing sense that the conflict in Libya is stumbling into a new and uncertain phase, marked not by the strengths of the opposing sides but by a realisation of their weaknesses....

And the coalition, too – so optimistic at first behind the scenes about being able to lever Gaddafi out of power with a limited air campaign – has also run out of steam as the US has quickly moved to limit its involvement in the war, ruling out ground troops, and its participants have come to realise the limitations of the UN resolution that authorised force in the first place.

Instead, what has begun to emerge is what many feared in the first place – a stalemate, defined by two sides playing a kind of lethal tag in the desert over deserted oil towns....

Ham's prognosis has been underscored by US intelligence analysis, which has come to the same conclusion. Officials who spoke anonymously to the Washington Post have cautioned against the idea that Gaddafi may be toppled quickly, despite the high-profile defection to London last week of his foreign minister and long-time intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa. "Neither side seems capable of moving the ball down the field," a US official told the paper. "It is also true that neither side has endless resources." If Ham's message was pessimistic, that delivered to the House armed services committee by Ham's boss, defence secretary Robert Gates, was bleak, not least for those in the opposition listening to his message in Benghazi....

And it has not only been US officials who have been speaking their mind. Last week a collection of former British defence chiefs – perhaps reflecting the views of serving senior officers – used the stage of the House of Lords to warn of the dangers of "mission creep" and taking sides in a civil war if it were decided to use ground troops to break the impasse.

What is also true, however, is that in being weakened by the conflict both sides may be forced into new positions suggesting that, ultimately, negotiations rather than military force might bring the crisis in Libya to an end... a view strongly endorsed by Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini. ......Whatever the outcome, what seems most unlikely is that the rebels' newly visible generals will be leading their troops into Tripoli any time in the near future."