THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Col Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan regime suffered another blow on Wednesday when Shokri Ghanem, its oil minister and former prime minister, ended weeks of speculation and announced he had turned on the dictator.
Mr Ghanem appeared alongside the Libyan ambassador to Rome, who has also defected, to condemn the "daily spilling of blood" and "unbearable" spiral of violence in the country.
However, he said it was too early to say whether he would work with the opposition National Transitional Council in Benghazi.
He also denied suggestions, repeated by Libyan government officials, that he had timed his move so that he could represent the opposition at a key summit of the international oil cartel, OPEC, in Vienna next week.
Mr Ghanem disappeared from public view after first leaving Libya two weeks ago.
A former prime minister who had overseen the reopening of relations with the West, he did not have the historic personal relationship with Col Muammar Gaddafi of Moussa Koussa, the foreign minister who defected in March.
But his knowledge of the workings of the regime and in particular the state oil company, which he ran, could provide important information.
At a news conference in Rome, he said oil production in Libya was coming to a halt because of the international embargo. "Very little is being produced, because of the UN embargo and the fact that foreigners have fled for reasons of security," he said. (+ video) » | Nick Squires, Rome and Richard Spencer in Tripoli | Wednesday, June 01, 2011
