NEWS ANALYSIS : Lockerbie Crisis Fuels Libyan Power Struggle : Politics: Internal conflict, public’s growing resentment put Kadafi in a precarious position.

Col. Moammar Kadafi is attempting to control a rising level of conflict within his own regime ignited by the Lockerbie crisis, coming amid growing anti-government resentment that diplomats say has placed Kadafi’s regime at its most precarious point since Libya’s revolution in 1969.

A recent shake-up within the senior echelons of Libya’s powerful security apparatus reflects an internal power struggle whose outcome will determine not only the resolution of the Lockerbie affair but also the future of Kadafi’s government, Western and Arab diplomats in the Libyan capital said.

Unprecedented criticism of inefficiency within the government was aired at the normally tightly controlled General People’s Congress last week, with one woman delegate ejected from the session after calling for the public execution of government ministers who fail to do their jobs.

A major overhaul of the government is expected before the conclusion of the session this week, but diplomatic sources said the congress is unlikely to provide a decisive resolution to the issue that has most confounded the Kadafi regime--demands by the United States and Britain for extradition of two Libyans accused of roles in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.

Kadafi in recent weeks has been inclined to accede to the United Nations’ demands that he hand over the suspects to avoid the threat of escalating sanctions against Libya, but he has met with stiff opposition from the security forces that provide the basis of his regime, a senior Arab diplomat said.

“There is a power struggle going on, mostly between Kadafi’s intelligence chiefs and everyone else,” the official said. “Lately, it’s clear that the security service is the main organization against the delivery of the men.”

The internal conflict, combined with growing popular unrest over rising prices, inefficient delivery of government services and unease over the U.N.-sponsored air and military embargo against Libya, has placed the Kadafi regime at the most troubled point in its history, diplomats said.

“When I came here four years ago, I couldn’t imagine that there could be a change in the regime,” said a diplomat who meets frequently with senior Libyan officials. “I could imagine that now. I think things have changed, and the possibilities have increased.”

Kadafi is now believed to be in opposition to the No. 2 man in his regime, Staff Maj. Abdel-Salam Jalloud, over Jalloud’s strong opposition to handing over the two men described by the United States as Libyan security agents.

While Kadafi and Jalloud have often displayed differences over policies such as the Persian Gulf War--Kadafi took a neutral stance while Jalloud traveled to Baghdad and criticized U.S. intervention--those differences were widely believed to reflect Kadafi’s attempt to straddle the fence. But the current differences over Lockerbie, because of Jalloud’s close connections to Libya’s security services, are thought to be real, several diplomatic sources said.

Jalloud himself is an inscrutable figure who is at once close to Kadafi--the two men’s ties stretch back to their youths in the military, and they have ruled jointly for the past 23 years--and a man who plays the tough guy to Kadafi’s role as a visionary.

“Jalloud is an impossible man,” said one Tripoli-based diplomat who meets frequently with the No. 2 leader. “He speaks to you sometimes and he looks out of this world. Some say he is simply a drunk, but it’s not really that. He starts talking on a subject, then he’s silent for two minutes, then he starts fidgeting, then he talks on another subject. You ask yourself: What is happening in this man’s mind?”

The Egyptians have sought to increase the wedge between Kadafi and Jalloud, pleading Kadafi’s case with the West while attacking Jalloud in the official press.

“What exactly is Libyan Maj. Abdel-Salam Jalloud up to? Has he come to set up a state within Libya without Col. Moammar Kadafi taking a tough measure against him and his conduct?” wrote the editor of the Egyptian Gazette, Samir Ragab.

Jalloud’s own power base is not thought to be sufficient to present a threat to Kadafi, whose more serious opposition in recent months has come from an increasingly dissatisfied public, diplomats said.

At the annual General People’s Congress which began here June 13, public questioning of government ministers, a process that normally takes two days, stretched to more than a week.

“All those responsible for perpetrating these mistakes should be tried, and Green Square should be opened to the public for their execution!” shouted one woman representative in an unusual attack on the government from what is normally a closely managed body of Kadafi supporters.

The political schizophrenia has played out daily in the government press, which began earlier this month with a series of unusual attacks on Kadafi’s pan-Arab policies and wound up attacking itself for attacking Kadafi. “The leader has not deceived us,” protested the newspaper Green March, in an article attacking criticisms of Kadafi in its own pages and those of the Jamahiriya newspaper.

In the end, Kadafi appeared to be picturing himself in the style of the late Egyptian pan-Arabist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, who suffered public indignation over his dreams of uniting the Arabs after the failed war against the Israelis in 1967.

“Moammar Kadafi finds himself today just as Abdel Nasser found himself in a previous age, under criticism from the Libyan masses. Furthermore, we can’t assume that we’ll forget what manner of criticism the Egyptian people directed against Abdel Nasser and the blame they heaped upon him when they said the Arabs had left him to face things on his own,” Green March wrote last week.