BRUSSELS — Resolving internal divisions, NATO prepared on Friday to assume leadership from the United States of the military campaign against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces as allied officials scrambled to work out the precise command arrangements, senior NATO and American officials said. 
 
 The agreement came as President Obama, facing criticism from his political opponents, began trying to seize control of his message about the Libyan conflict. On Friday, he defended his handling of the Libya crisis in a White House meeting and conference call with more than 20 Democrat and Republican Congressional leaders. 
 
 The White House also announced that he would give a speech to the nation on Libya on Monday night. And his two top foreign policy advisers — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates — prepared to appear on the Sunday talk shows to explain the administration’s Libya policy. 
 
 Mr. Obama has come under criticism from Republicans in Congress for failing to provide a coherent explanation of the operation, which is in its seventh day. Administration officials portray it as an already successful effort to prevent the Libyan leader from attacking his own people. But the military campaign has been dogged by friction over its ultimate mission, and which of the disparate countries involved should command the operation. 
 
 The allied effort won rare military commitments in the Arab world on Friday when two Qatari fighter jets flew on patrol with the Western allies and the United Arab Emirates said that it would send warplanes to join them. 
 
 NATO had agreed late Thursday that it would take over not only command and control of the no-fly zone, but also the much riskier campaign to protect civilians through aggressive coalition airstrikes on Colonel Qaddafi’s troops on the ground, the officials said. Details of the second part of the operation will be worked out in a formal military planning document in time for a meeting of coalition foreign ministers in London on Tuesday, the officials said. 
 
 “It’s been handed over to military planners,” Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, said on Friday. 
 
 As the air campaign entered its seventh day, allied warplanes and Tomahawk cruise missiles pounded Libyan air defenses, communications posts and troops. At the Pentagon, Vice Adm. William E. Gortney, the director of the joint staff, said that the airstrikes were making it harder for Colonel Qaddafi to supply and communicate with his troops, but that they had not yet seriously weakened the Libyan military forces or pushed them to heed the Americans’ call to defy their leader. 
 
 In an apparent bid to bolster the loyalty of Colonel Qaddafi’s armed forces, Libyan state television said Friday without details that the military would promote all its officers, implying a raise in pay. A government spokesman, Musa Ibrahim, said that similar raises were carried out during earlier crises, like Colonel Qaddafi’s failed war with Chad in the late 1980s. 
 
 The London meeting of coalition foreign ministers and subsequent meetings will deal with the larger political campaign, including sanctions and other measures intended to put more pressure on Colonel Qaddafi to quit. It will also have representation from the United Nations, the Arab League and the African Union. But that meeting of what the British are calling “the contact group” will not be running the military side of the operation, the officials said. 
 
 Left unresolved, of course, is how long the campaign will last, because Colonel Qaddafi shows no sign of obeying the United Nations Security Council resolution demanding a cease-fire and refuses to pull his troops back to barracks. At the same time, the ragtag opposition may not be strong enough, even with the coalition’s air power, to force the colonel from his redoubt in Tripoli. 
 
 NATO officials said Friday they thought the no-fly zone would last about three months, but Pentagon officials privately expressed fears that it could last much longer. 
 
 A sticking point in the negotiations to broadening NATO’s control was what military officials call the “no-drive zone,” the bombing of Colonel Qaddafi’s ground forces, tanks and artillery outside Libyan cities. France wanted to have a clearer leadership role in the campaign, while Turkey was concerned about the operation’s evolving into one involving ground troops. Many countries, like Italy and Norway, however, said they would participate only if NATO ran the entire military operation. ||||| President Barack Obama told congressional leaders there are no plans to use the U.S. military to assassinate Libyan strongman Muammar Qadhafi — despite the administration’s policy of seeking regime change in the North African country — according to sources familiar with a Friday White House Situation Room briefing. 
 
 “There was a discussion of how we have other ways of regime change,” Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee told POLITICO. “It’s not our role to do anything at this point from a kinetic point of view. It is our goal for regime change, but we’re not going to do it from a kinetic point of view.” 
 
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 Another source briefed on the one-hour meeting confirmed that account. 
 
 “It’s not just military efforts that can force his removal,” the source said. 
 
 The hastily arranged briefing came amid fierce criticism from Capitol Hill of the president’s decision to strike Libya’s defenses. The stakes of Obama’s communication effort with leading lawmakers on foreign policy are high because liberals, conservatives and some moderates have questioned his strategy, the costs of the engagement and the appropriateness of deploying U.S. forces without the consent of Congress. 
 
 The president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen and Gen. Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command, were among the administration officials briefing lawmakers involved in the Friday meeting and conference call. 
 
 In addition to Ruppersberger, who was in the meeting, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) the Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking Republican Richard Lugar (Ind.), House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and the chairwoman and ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.) were either in attendance or on the call. 
 
 The top lawmakers on the Appropriations committees were also on the call, including Sens. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), as well as Reps. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) and Norm Dicks (D-Wash.). Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Intelligence Committee, also participated in the briefing. 
 
 Obama is already dealing with a skeptical congressional audience, and clearly wanted to get out in front of the controversy before Congress returns next week. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's John Simpson reports from Tripoli on claims of civilian casualties in Libya 
 
 Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is said to be arming volunteers to fight the uprising against his rule, a senior US military official has said. 
 
 Vice Admiral William Gortney said Col Gaddafi had "virtually no air defence" and a "diminishing ability to command and sustain his forces on the ground". 
 
 Coalition forces launched strikes against Libyan tanks around the eastern town of Ajdabiya, he said. 
 
 Rebels and pro-Gaddafi forces are in a stand-off near the town, witnesses say. 
 
 Meanwhile, Qatar became the first Arab state to contribute to the air mission over Libya. 
 
 'Civilian reinforcements' 
 
 Briefing reporters on Friday, Vice Adm Gortney said Col Gaddafi's forces had been severely weakened by international military action. 
 
 "His air force cannot fly, his warships are staying in port, his ammunitions stores are being destroyed, communications towers are being toppled, his command bunkers rendered useless," he said. 
 
 "We've received reports today that he has taken to arming what he calls volunteers to fight the opposition," he added. 
 
 "I'm not sure... if they are truly volunteers or not, and I don't know how many of these recruits he's going to get, but I find it interesting that he may now feel it necessary to seek civilian reinforcements." 
 
 At the scene The coalition know that killing civilians would be disastrous in this war. They're plainly making big efforts to avoid it. Libyan television often shows pictures purporting to portray civilian victims, but they're impossible to verify. Today international journalists in Tripoli were bussed to the suburb of Tajoura, which was genuinely targeted by the coalition last night. Nearby we were shown a farmhouse that had supposedly been hit. But the holes in the wall that we were told were shrapnel could only have been the result of someone firing an automatic rifle at it. And although the farmer, a strong Gaddafi supporter, said his 18-year-old daughter had been injured, the gardener said it was a four-year-old boy. It all looked like a rather inadequate set-up, done for effect. 
 
 Western forces began bombing targets last weekend in a bid to enforce a UN resolution that banned the Libyan military from launching air attacks on civilians. 
 
 Nato is expected to take over the lead of the entire Libya operation from the Americans in the coming days. It has already taken command of enforcing the no-fly zone. 
 
 Despite the reports of considerable setbacks for pro-Gaddafi forces, fighting has continued in Misrata in the west and Ajdabiya in the east. 
 
 French and British jets bombed targets near the eastern town of Ajdabiya overnight, including government forces' artillery. 
 
 Rebels had tried to attack pro-Gaddafi forces after the air strikes, but were quoted by Reuters as saying they had to call off the assault. 
 
 The men, driving pick-up trucks armed with rocket launchers, said they had been spurred on by the bombing raids. 
 
 The AFP news agency reported that Gaddafi loyalists in armoured vehicles had repelled attacks by rebels at the gates of the town. 
 
 The town has been besieged for days. Fleeing residents said the streets were deserted, and that government troops were opening fire at random. 
 
 Air strikes were reported in other cities on Thursday night, including the Tripoli suburb of Tajoura, known to house several military bases. 
 
 France and Britain initially led calls to impose the no-fly zone over Libya, and have taken a key role in enforcing it. 
 
 But the leadership of the operation and the bulk of the logistics have been borne by the US. 
 
 President Barack Obama has been insistent that the US should not continue to lead the intervention. 
 
 On Friday, both UK and Italian officials said Nato would take command in the coming days. 
 
 Analysts say the US will continue to play a major role. 
 
 The move by Nato has come only after days of tortuous negotiation, with France arguing strongly that there should be a broader coalition of nations leading the operation. ||||| Police action, conflict, hostilities and now “kinetic military action.” They’re all euphemisms for that word that this White House and many before it have been so careful not to say: War. 
 
 Administration officials told congressional aides in a closed briefing earlier this week that the United States is not at war with Libya, and Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes danced around the question in a Wednesday exchange with reporters aboard Air Force One. 
 
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 “I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone,” Rhodes said. “Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end. But again, the nature of our commitment is that we are not getting into an open-ended war, a land invasion in Libya.” 
 
 Those kind of verbal gymnastics to avoid calling a sustained bombing of a foreign country a “war” aren’t flying with members of Congress. 
 
 “This is an act of war,” Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.), a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee told the Rockford Register Star. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), in a letter to the president on Wednesday, said that he was “troubled that U.S. military resources were committed to a war” without a clear goal — or the consent of Congress. 
 
 So while a United States-led coalition hammers Libya with Tomahawk missiles and precision bombs in support of a rebel challenge to strongman Muammar Qadhafi, a shadow war over the semantics of armed conflict has erupted in the domestic political debate. 
 
 There’s even a peanut gallery: Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart headlined a segment “America at not-war.” 
 
 Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) told the Dorchester Reporter that he and his colleagues should have had an opportunity to weigh in on what he said is definitely a “war.” 
 
 “I take the Constitution kind of seriously and it’s very clear. It doesn’t presume I wouldn’t support it, but I don’t see how you can say shelling an independent country is not an act of war,” Capuano said. 
 
 In an interview with POLITICO earlier this week, Republican Rep. Walter Jones, who represents thousands of Marines deployed from Camp Lejeune to support the current action in Libya, repeatedly referred to the hostilities as “war.” 
 
 Barry Carter, an expert on international law at Georgetown University, says that the word “war” has lost its meaning — and not just in recent decades. 
 
 “The term war has really, in the last few centuries, become a very subjective concept. People use it or don’t use it depending on the circumstances. This isn’t just the U.S. It’s other countries,” he told POLITICO, citing “legal, political or constitutional needs” that make “war” a taboo term for many world leaders. 
 
 “There’s no relevance to the word war,” says Michael Byers, a professor of international law at the University of British Columbia. “If you look at the U.N. charter, it’s framed in terms of the use of force.” 
 
 In international humanitarian law the term “armed conflict” is applied, Byers said. “It is precisely [because] of a public perception that a war is something that is on a larger scale, when in fact international law seeks to control behavior in any kind of situation of organized violence.”
– President Obama has said Moammar Gadhafi should go, but he apparently doesn't mean it in the most extreme sense. The president told congressional lawmakers today that the military isn't out to assassinate the Libyan leader, reports Politico. “There was a discussion of how we have other ways of regime change,” said one attendee of the briefing, Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, who couldn't resist using the new buzz word: “It’s not our role to do anything at this point from a kinetic point of view." (Click for more on that "kinetic" thing.) Hillary Clinton and top Pentagon officials joined Obama in the meeting and conference call, which included top lawmakers such as John Boehner, Eric Cantor, John Kerry, and Nancy Pelosi. In another development, NATO is expected to take over all military operations—not just the no-fly zone—in a matter of days, reports the BBC. Meanwhile, the allies got help from the Arab world, notes the New York Times. A Qatari jet flew a patrol today, and the United Arab Emirates said it would soon send warplanes to do the same. The president is expected to make a speech on the mission Monday evening.