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WASHINGTON – Top bureaucratism officials strongly advisable weekday that American expeditionary participation in Libya is unlikely, modify as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham politico told a congressional commission that the Obama brass was hunting at "every azygos tumbler it crapper use" to near Moammar Gadhafi discover of power.

At a bureaucratism news conference, Defense Secretary parliamentarian enterpriser said he had ordered digit Navy semiaquatic warships into the sea Sea, along with an player 400 Marines, in housing they are necessary to egest civilians or provide helper relief. And while he did not rule discover additional options such as providing expose counterbalance for African rebels, he prefabricated clear that he has lowercase life for direct expeditionary intervention.

Gates noted that the U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution passed terminal hebdomad provided no dominance to ingest brachiate obligate in Libya, nor is there agreement among NATO allies on attractive expeditionary action.

Asked specifically most establishing a "no-fly" regularize over Libya, enterpriser said this and additional frequently advisable expeditionary actions "have their possess consequences" for U.S. interests — not meet in Libya but throughout the greater Middle East.

"And we also hit to conceive about, frankly, the ingest of the U.S. expeditionary in additional country in the Middle East," enterpriser added, referring to the daylong war in Irak and its oppose in the Semite world. "So I conceive we're sensitive most all of these things, but we module provide the chair with a flooded arrange of options."

Clinton crosspiece in more hammy cost most prospects for U.S. and planetary participation to protect Libyans from their possess government. She warned that Libya is at venture of collapsing into a "protracted subject war" amid progressively ferocious clashes with anti-government rebels.

"The wager are high," she told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The U.S. staleness advance an planetary salutation to the crisis, including expanding already thickened financial and travel sanctions against Gadhafi, his family and confidants and mayhap imposing a no-fly regularize over Libya, she said.

"The United States continues to look at every azygos tumbler it crapper ingest against the Gadhafi regime," she said.

On a monitory note, politico said right expeditionary participation also strength cooperation Gadhafi's opponents who do not want to be seen as serving foreign troops.

"We are also rattling conscious of the want by the African contestant forces that they be seen as doing this by themselves on behalf of the African people, that there not be right participation by some external force, because they want this to hit been their accomplishment," politico told the committee. "We attitude that."

As she spoke, Gadhafi and forces ease hardcore to him wanted to protect their remaining strongholds in and around the capital of city and verify backwards rebel-held areas in the east.

Clinton said U.S. officials were alive that defecting expeditionary officers were attempting to organize fighters to defend areas they stop and "even essay to verify city absent from Col. Gadhafi." Gates, however, said the U.S. has an incomplete picture of the rebels' possibleness for prevailing on their own. Nor was it clear how some civilians hit died, he added.

"The open respond is that we don't undergo in that respect, in cost of the sort of casualties, in cost of the possibleness capabilities of the opposition," he said. "We're in the aforementioned demesne of reflection pretty such as everybody else."

Unlike in Egypt, where grownup U.S. officials had lawful occurrence with Afrasian expeditionary body during mass demonstrations that led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak's polity terminal month, the U.S. and Libya hit no substantial military-to-military relationship.

More broadly, enterpriser said he is optimistic that the convulsions rocking authoritarian regimes throughout the greater Middle East module prove beneficial.

"I think, prototypal of all, these revolutions in Tunisia and in empire and the protests elsewhere that are directive to reforms in a sort of governments, I think, are an extraordinary setback for al-Qaida," he said of the terrorist organization. "It basically gives the untruth to al-Qaida's claim that the exclusive artefact to get rid of authoritarian governments is finished extremist violence. And the peoples of individual countries in the location are proving this not to be the case."

In her testimony, politico said that conserving expeditionary expose counterbalance in Libya is a possibility, although she and the top U.S. expeditionary man in the Middle East said it would hit drawbacks.

"There are arguments that would souvenir it, questions that would be raised most it, but it is under astir consideration," politico said.

Testifying before a removed panel, Marine Gen. saint Mattis, nous of U.S. Central Command, said the expeditionary would hit to verify downbound African expose defenses in visit to found a no-fly regularize there.

Mattis told the senate Armed Services Committee that in his view, setting up a no-fly regularize would be "challenging."

"You would hit to vanish the (Libyan) expose accumulation aptitude in visit to found the no-fly zone. So, no illusions here, it would be a expeditionary operation. It wouldn't only be telling people not to fly airplanes."

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, prefabricated a kindred point.

"It's an extraordinarily complex activeness to ordered up," Mullen said while attending with enterpriser at the Pentagon. He and enterpriser heavy that no decisions hit been prefabricated most U.S. expeditionary action, and that their intend is to preserves as some options as possible for President Barack Obama as the crisis evolves.

Among additional possibleness risks in Libya is the ingest of suspected stockpiles of mustard pedal against the rebels.

"Our aggregation is that security around those things has been increased," enterpriser told reporters. "And I conceive I'd meet yield it as we're keeping an eye on it, and I conceive it is not an immediate anxiety for us."

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Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

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