Washington, Mar. 31: The Central Intelligence Agency has inserted clandestine operatives into Libya to gather intelligence for military air strikes and to contact and vet the beleaguered rebels battling Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s forces.

A New York Times report quoted Obama administration officials as saying that small groups of C. I. A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Gaddafi’s military.

In addition to the C. I. A. presence, composed of an unknown number of Americans who had worked at the spy agency’s station in Tripoli and others who arrived more recently, current and former British officials said that dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya.

The British operatives have been directing air strikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces and missile installations, the officials said.

American officials hope that similar information gathered by American intelligence officers — including the location of Colonel Qaddafi’s munitions depots and the clusters of government troops inside towns — might help weaken Libya’s military enough to encourage defections within its ranks.

In a statement released Wednesday evening, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, declined to comment “on intelligence matters,” but he said that no decision had yet been made to provide arms to the rebels. (ANI)