Libya’s future is an “open question” with strongman Colonel Gaddafi potentially able to cling to power through violence, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said.

“Whether he’s able to re-establish control through extraordinarily bloody repression, whether the army boots him out... I think it’s really an open question at this point,” Mr Gates said in an interview published by the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard.

Mr Gates said that the Libyan military was “fragmenting” and had never been as cohesive as armed forces in other countries, a likely reference to neighbouring Egypt where the army took charge after protesters toppled leader Hosni Mubarak.

The US defence chief mused that if Col. Gaddafi were to fall, Libya could return to its structure before 1963 when it was made up of three provinces – Cyrenaica bordering Egypt, a western coastal region and a section oriented toward sub-Saharan Africa.

“The French – I don’t know what the British have in the area – but the French and the Italians potentially, I suppose, could have some assets they could put in there quicker,” he said.