Speaking to reporters at the Foreign Ministry's office in Jeddah, he said the decision on a possible no-fly zone in Libya would be taken by the Arab League Ministerial Council meeting in Cairo on Saturday.

“The main objective (of this no-fly zone) is to stop the bloodbath and protect Libya's independence and territorial integrity, and it comes under Arab League's responsibility," he said. The GCC foreign ministers who met in Abu Dhabi recently had supported the no-fly zone proposal.

Meanwhile, a high-ranking member of the Libyan military flew to Cairo on Wednesday with a message for Egyptian army officials from Muammar Qaddafi, whose troops pounded opposition forces with artillery barrages and gunfire in at least two major cities.

The two sides in Libya traded barrages of artillery shells and rockets Wednesday afternoon about 20 km west of the oil port of Ras Lanuf, an indication that regime forces were much closer than previously known to that city. Ras Lanuf is the westernmost point seized by rebels moving along the country’s main highway on the Mediterranean coast.

In Cairo, an Egyptian Army official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that Maj. Gen. Abdul-Rahman bin Ali Al-Saiid Al-Zawi, the head of Libya’s logistics and supply authority, was asking to meet Egypt’s military rulers.

There have been no public contacts between the Libyan regime and Egypt’s ruling generals since the Libyan uprising broke out on Feb. 15, and there have been no known government-related flights during that time.

Meanwhile, Qaddafi said in a Turkish television interview that Libyans would fight back if Western nations imposed a no-fly zone to prevent his regime from using its air force to bomb government opponents staging a rebellion.

He said imposing the restrictions would prove the West’s real intention was to seize his country’s oil wealth. “Such a situation would be useful,” Qaddafi said. “The Libyan people would understand their real aims to take Libya under their control, to take their freedoms and to take their oil and all Libyan people will take up arms and fight.” 

In another development, the Libyan government and rebels fighting it accused each other of blowing up oil facilities in the east of the country on Wednesday.

The rebels said Qaddafi’s forces had hit an oil pipeline leading to Es Sider and dropped bombs on storage tanks in the Ras Lanuf area. Libyan state television blamed the explosion on “Al-Qaeda-backed” armed elements who had blown up an oil storage tank as pro-Qaddafi forces advanced into Ras Lanuf.

“He (Qaddafi) is playing a dirty game trying to hit pipelines and make the Americans jittery so they resort to a land intervention which would boost support for Qaddafi among Libyan people,” Essam Gheriani, a rebel official in Benghazi, said.