Europeans scramble to escape Libya's revolution

BRUSSELS: Governments and companies scrambled Monday to escape Libya as Tripoli warned of a "fight to the last bullet" in a bloody uprising that leaves Europe stuck on what to do about oil-rich Moamer Kadhafi.

As witnesses and reports said main centres including flashpoint Benghazi had fallen to protesters by mid-afternoon, others described demonstrators storming Libyan state television or police fleeing.

After Kadhafi's son Saif al-Islam warned that "rivers of blood will run through Libya" in a blunt threat of "civil war," foreign capitals and multinational businesses hit the ejector-seat button.

Turkey said a morning repatriation mission flew back empty-handed after being denied permission to land, but Ankara was to send four planes and two ferries.

A first batch of 600 among some 25,000 Turks in Libya had already pulled out at the weekend.

Portugal sent a C-130 Hercules military plane to Tripoli, with a second plane on standby.

Austria and Serbia announced similar plans.

British energy giant BP, long accused of lobbying for the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi in order to win a major oil drilling contract, said it was evacuating staff, as did Italy's ENI, the biggest foreign energy producer in Libya.

Brent oil prices soared above 105 dollars per barrel on Monday, striking levels last seen before the 2008 global financial crisis, while Fitch agency downgraded Libya's credit rating.

Russian Railways and Italian defence and industry giant Finmeccanica also said employees were being yanked out.

As China and others warned against all travel to Libya, the United States said it too was "considering all appropriate actions."

European Union foreign ministers were already meeting in Brussels, looking at how to make future aid more conditional on democratic reform, but the emphasis shifted after rights groups said state repression claimed up to 400 lives.

The International Federation for Human Rights said in Paris that the uprising had resulted in "between 300 and 400 deaths, probably closer to 400". Human Rights Watch earlier cited a death toll of 233, including 60 just on Sunday in Benghazi.

Spain's Trinidad Jimenez said the 27-state EU was envisaging pulling people out, although no shared decision had been reached by late afternoon despite parallel talks between EU consular officials in Tripoli.

"We are extremely concerned, we are coordinating the possible evacuation of EU citizens coming from Libya especially from Benghazi," Jimenez said.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain "will assess the need for evacuation as things progress," stressing the immediate priority was to secure "proper protection" and help those "trying to leave the country."

London summoned the Libyan ambassador and called for investigations that would see those behind the crackdown "held to account," Hague underlined, in a sharp change in tone from the previous Labour government.

British Prime Minister David Cameron meanwhile flew to Egypt, whose veteran president Hosni Mubarak fell earlier this month after Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

While French was more cautious, Italy's Franco Frattini, whose country faces a flood of illegal immigration from north Africa, said the threat of an "Islamic Arab Emirate at the borders of Europe" in Libya was now a matter of "serious concern."

Not all EU states, though, were on the same page -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi having said on Saturday he would not "bother" his close friend Kadhafi, 68.

Libyan authorities and Kadhafi's family own stakes in Italy's biggest bank UniCredit, Finmeccanica and even Juventus football club.

The Czech Republic's Karel Schwarzenberg also said Europeans should not "get involved too much" with the anti-regime movement in Libya.

While an autocratic regime in Bahrain has also responded to pro-democracy protests with deadly force, Morocco reported deaths during demonstrations and Yemen faced its own revolt, Europe's pointed criticism of Libya particularly angered Tripoli, which warned that it could suspend cooperation in the fight against illegal immigration.

German European affairs minister Werner Hoyer slammed the threat as "an incredible mistake," and said the EU would "not allow itself to be blackmailed."

Accused of backing autocrats as a bulwark against Islamic extremists, EU ministers want to direct new European Investment Bank and other funding at the region, while re-booting a long-stalled project for a north-south Mediterranean Union.