Summary of the American and International Press on the Libyan Revolution - Morgan Strong

Rebel government pushes for funds as hunt for Al Qathafi continues

(CNN)-The future of Libya remained uncertain Thursday as rebel leadership moved to secure money to govern while their fighters encountered fierce pockets of resistance.

The biggest question for the opposition is the whereabouts of Muammar Al Qathafi, who remains elusive despite a $1.4 million bounty that the opposition placed for his capture or death.

Al Qathafi took to the airwaves Wednesday, taunting the rebels and calling on loyalists to rise up in Tripoli.

"I have been out a bit in Tripoli discreetly, without being seen by people, and ... I did not feel that Tripoli was in danger," Al Qathafi said in an audio message aired by two Arabic-language networks.

He said he was no longer at his Tripoli compound, saying he had retreated in a "tactical move" after NATO airstrikes destroyed much of it.

CNN cannot independently confirm the authenticity of the recording.

The search for Al Qathafi follows news that the National Transitional Council is lobbying the United Nations and others to release Libyan money frozen in foreign banks by the Security Council.

The United States is expected Thursday to call for a vote by the U.N. Security Council. South Africa opposes the move, and says the situation on the ground in Libya has not been settled.

Elsewhere, the Libya Contact Group - an alliance of countries - will meet Thursday in Istanbul to discuss how to help rebuild Libya's infrastructure.

The rebel control of Libya, while significant, is not complete. Fighters weathered pockets of resistance across Tripoli.

Special Forces from Britain, France, Jordan and Qatar - on the ground in Libya - stepped up operations in Tripoli and other cities. But a senior opposition official said a large portion of the southern half of the capital remained dangerous.

Rebels controlled the hotly contested airport, but were struggling to control an area east of it. Two planes were set ablaze Wednesday night and exploded after a hit by Al Qathafi forces shelling the airport.

In the oil-rich city of Brega, several crude oil storage tanks have been burning for six days after they were set ablaze by retreating troops, said Ramadan Shalash, the refinery fire chief.

"The forces of Al Qathafi were here for about three months," he said. "And we were afraid that everything would be destroyed."

The heavy fighting took a costly toll.

"Almost all of the hospitals around the city are receiving wounded, but some of the hospitals have not been accessible due to the fighting, which means that other hospitals have an added burden," said Jonathan Whittall, head of the Medecins Sans Frontieres humanitarian mission in Libya.

Whittall described chaos inside medical institutions short on doctors and nurses, many of whom have been afraid to help patients in Tripoli because of fighting.

Nearby houses were converted into inpatient departments with patients lying on floors or on desks and "essentially caring for themselves," he said.

Two surgical teams were on their way from Europe with the first set to arrive Friday, said Robin Waudo, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"Some of the medical facilities have been closed, and the ones functioning don't have the staff or medical supplies to deal with incoming trauma patients," Waudo said.

The anxiety over Al Qathafi's whereabouts forced some Tripoli residents to set up checkpoints to protect their homes.

"They are afraid of something that could happen because of the simple fact that Al Qathafi hasn't been caught," said Tariq Elmeri, 28.

"To an extent, people don't really have the courage to go to different neighbourhoods," he said.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan ambassador to Libya said his home in Tripoli was attacked by armed groups.

"It is a violation of international law because the attacks were against a site of the Venezuelan territory," the ambassador told state-run AVN news agency.

The National Transitional Council said it is negotiating with Al Qathafi's tribe in his hometown of Sirte to ensure their surrender without bloodshed.

And Al Qathafi's son, Saadi, also seemed open to negotiating a cease-fire.

"I will try to save my city Tripoli and 2 millions of people living there ... otherwise Tripoli will be lost forever like Somalia," he wrote in an e-mail to CNN Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson.

Without a cease-fire, he added, "Soon it will be a sea of blood."

(N. Y. Times) - NATO was reported on Thursday to be providing significant support in the hunt for Col. Muammar Al Qathafi as rebels sought to cement their control, offering a nearly $2 million bounty for his capture and closing in on one of his last bastions of support, his birthplace in Sirte.

The rebels claimed breakthroughs on other fronts, saying their fighters had started battling for Sabha, another of the colonelÂ’s stronghold in the south, and in Zuwarah in the west, where they said they had captured a military base.

Unusually, BritainÂ’s defence Secretary, Liam Fox, said publicly on Thursday that NATO was trying to help the rebels locate the elusive and still defiant Colonel Al Qathafi apparently breaking from the frequent Western assertion that the allianceÂ’s role is limited under its United Nations mandate to protecting civilians.

“I can confirm that NATO is providing intelligence and reconnaissance assets” to the insurgents “to help them track down Colonel Al Qathafi and other remnants of the regime,” Mr. Fox told Sky News.

But he withheld comment on a report in The Daily Telegraph that British special forces on the ground were involved in the hunt for Colonel Al Qathafi. He also said there were “absolutely no plans” to commit British ground forces to Libya in the future.

In diplomatic and financial terms, the rebel cause seemed to be facing a setback after South Africa refused to endorse a United States effort at the United Nations Security Council to unblock frozen Libyan funds worth $1.5 billion for the rebels. The impasse provoked sharp exchanges with the rebelsÂ’ Western allies.

In London, Mr. Fox himself castigated South Africa on Thursday for failing to show the same solidarity as the world showed to opponents of apartheid.

“I think there will be huge moral pressure on South Africa. They wanted the world at one point to stand with them against apartheid. They now need to stand with the Libyan people,” Mr. Fox said on the BBC.

Efforts to unblocking Libyan government funds, frozen initially to bring pressure on Colonel Al Qathafi, seemed to be gathering pace on Thursday as Mahmoud Jibril, the de facto rebel prime minister, planned a European tour to seek the release of billions of dollars of assets.

According to news reports, Mr. Jibril was set to meet in Milan with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, which has long had close economic ties with Libya, a former colony.

The quest for an injection of cash coincides with reports of ever-increasing shortages of essential supplies in Libya.

South AfricaÂ’s United Nations ambassador, Baso Sangqu, told reporters that his government was very concerned about the humanitarian situation there but, before agreeing to the release of frozen assets, wanted to await the outcome of an African Union meeting Thursday to discuss recognition of the fledgling rebel administration, The Associated Press reported.

Many African nations, long the recipients of Colonel Al QathafiÂ’s largesse, have not so far recognised the rebels. South AfricaÂ’s President, Jacob Zuma, has been at the forefront of African efforts to broker a ceasefire on terms favourable to Colonel Al Qathafi, but those efforts have produced no visible results, beyond souring relations with the West.

According to South African news reports on Thursday, Kgalema Motlanthe, the deputy President, has gone so far as to suggest that NATO commanders should be investigated for war crimes in the Libyan conflict.

“We know they are attempting to create the impression that the rebels are acting on their own in their attacks in Tripoli,” he was quoted as telling Parliament on Wednesday, “but there are clear links and co-ordination.”

“The question is whether the International Criminal Court would have the wherewithal to unearth that information and bring those who are responsible to book, including the NATO members or commanders on the ground,” Mr. Motlanthe said.

Sporadic firefights continued in Tripoli on Wednesday, a sign that control of the city could not be claimed by either side. In a show of strength, the rebels flooded the cityÂ’s thoroughfares with the mud-splattered trucks of their fighting brigades.

In another sign of the power shifts under way, Colonel Al QathafiÂ’s loyalists abruptly released more than 30 foreign journalists they had held captive in the Rixos Hotel here. Over the weekend, they were taken captive at gunpoint as the rebels advanced on the capital and left in the Rixos.

“Rixos crisis ends. All journalists are out!” Matthew Chance, a CNN correspondent, posted on Twitter as he and the others were allowed to leave the hotel with the aid of Red Cross workers who took them away.

Later in the day, the elation was tempered with word that four Italian journalists were abducted and their driver killed outside of Tripoli, in territory nominally under rebel control.

Italian consular officials said the journalists, abducted by unknown gunmen, were being held by Al Qathafi loyalists in an apartment near Bab al-Azziziyah, Colonel Al QathafiÂ’s captured compound and residence.

Colonel Al Qathafi was not at home when rebels stormed the fortress. He said in an address broadcast early Wednesday on a local Tripoli radio station that his retreat from the compound was a tactical manoeuvre.

He blamed months of NATO airstrikes for bringing down his government and vowed “martyrdom” or victory in his battle against the alliance. Urging Libyan tribes across the land to march on the capital, he said, “I call on all Tripoli residents, with all its young, old and armed brigades, to defend the city, to cleanse it, to put an end to the traitors and kick them out of our city.”

“These gangs seek to destroy Tripoli,” he said, referring to the rebels. “They are evil incarnate. We should fight them.”

In the eastern city of Benghazi, the base of the rebel uprising, the head of the rebel Transitional National Council told a news conference on Wednesday that Libyan businessmen had contributed two million dinars, about $1.7 million, for the capture of Colonel Al Qathafi dead or alive.

“We fear a catastrophe because of his behavior,” the rebel leader, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, told reporters there. The rebel leaders in Benghazi also called on loyalists in Sirte, more than 200 miles east of Tripoli, to join them, and said they had directed rebel fighting units to close in on Sirte from Misurata in the west and the port city of Ras Lanuf in the east.

The rebel military units from Misurata, which have emerged as the oppositionÂ’s most able fighters, have encountered little resistance. But there were reports on Wednesday that rebel brigades approaching from the east were stalled in Bin Jawwad, a hamlet that has tripped up the rebels during previous attempts to advance on Sirte.

Elsewhere, though, there were signs of loyalist disarray. Al Arabiya television reported that the rebels had taken control of an army base in Zuwarah, a coastal city about halfway between Tripoli and the Tunisian border.

There was no immediate confirmation of the report about the base, Mazraq al-Shams, which had been heavily contested for days. But there were news reports on Tuesday night that the Tunisian authorities had closed the main border crossing with Libya because of fighting in the Zuwarah area.

NATO warplanes were heard over the skies in Tripoli in the morning and later in the evening, striking unspecified targets in a bid to strike a fatal blow to Colonel Al QathafiÂ’s lingering loyalists.

Many citizens stayed at home as rebels blasted the skies with volleys of celebratory gunfire, though more shops could be seen opening and more cars seemed to be on the road.

In a sign of the changed atmosphere, hundreds of journalists on Wednesday moved into high-rise hotels that a day or two before would have been easy targets for snipers. Farther south, though, the two sides continued to fight over several neighbourhoods, including Abu Salim and Bab al-Azziziyah, the former Al Qathafi compound that was still not completely under rebel control.

As diplomacy accelerated in the new dynamics surrounding the conflict, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France met with Mahmoud Jibril, the Libyan rebel organisationÂ’s prime minister, in Paris.

Mr. Sarkozy told journalists afterward that he had offered medical assistance and said, “We are prepared to continue military operations as long as our Libyan friends need them.” France was the first country to recognize the Benghazi-based rebels and played a central role in the NATO air campaign along with the United States and Britain.

President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia, whose country has opposed the NATO effort, raised the possibility that Moscow might recognize the rebel administration but called for negotiations to end the fighting.

“Despite the successes of the rebels, Al Qathafi and his supporters still have a certain influence and military potential,” he told journalists after meeting in Siberia with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. “In essence, there are two powers in the country.”

The rebels must consolidate their control of the country for Russia to consider recognizing their government, he said. “If the rebels have enough strength and opportunities to unite the country for a new democratic start, then naturally, we will consider establishing relations with them,” Mr. Medvedev said.

In a further manoeuvre, China on Wednesday urged a “stable transition of power” in Libya and said it was in contact with the Transitional National Council, Reuters reported, suggesting that Beijing’s allegiance had shifted.

China had maintained close economic ties with the Al Qathafi government and withdrew tens of thousands of its workers at the start of the conflict.

Continuing a trend that has grown in recent days, two high-ranking officials of the Al Qathafi government declared their allegiance to the new leadership.

The deputy director of foreign security in the Libyan intelligence service, Gen. Khalifah Mohammed Ali, and the health minister, Mohammed Hijazi, announced their decisions in interviews with Al Arabiya, Reuters reported.

It remained unclear on Wednesday when the leaders of the rebel council would transfer their operations from Benghazi to Tripoli, as they have said they plan to. One of their leaders, Ali el-Essawi, Mr. JibrilÂ’s acting deputy, who was based in Benghazi, took a room in a guest house earlier in the week in Zawiyah, 50 miles from Tripoli.

(Aljazeera.net) - The head of Libya's rebel cabinet has launched a European diplomatic tour, hoping to project an image of a government-in-waiting and secure the release of billions of dollars in UN-frozen Libyan assets as Muammar Al Qathafi's 42-year autocratic regime seems near its end.

In wide-ranging remarks on Wednesday about his country's future, Mahmoud Jibril laid out plans for the post-Al Qathafi era, including forming a commission to draft a new constitution that would be subject to a national referendum.

The meetings come as the UN Security Council prepares to vote this week on a resolution that would release $1.5 billion in Libyan assets in US banks that the world body froze as a way to crimp Al Qathafi's ability to wage war on his people.

That would be a start: Some analysts estimated that as much as $110 billion is sitting frozen in banks worldwide.

The United States and the European Union have called for the quick release of assets to help the opposition National Transitional Council rebuild Libya's economy, restore essential services, reform the police and the army, and pay government salaries.

Jibril kicked off his European trip by meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, which along with Britain has been the major international power to take a leading role in a six-month air onslaught by NATO in Libya.

At a joint news conference, Jibril thanked Sarkozy for France's support in "protecting civilians" and appealed for more help "to obtain the unfreezing of Libyan funds so we can transform (our) promises into reality."

Earlier Wednesday in London, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said, "We are engaged at the United Nations and elsewhere to pave the way for the unfreezing of assets, the assets that have been frozen for five months but which ultimately belong to the Libyan people."

As for the NATO-led air campaign, which has provided nearly pivotal support as rebels advanced into Tripoli over the weekend, Sarkozy said it would continue until "Al Qathafi and his henchmen no longer represent a threat for the Libyan people."

He implied that the alliance would take its cues from the rebels.

"From the minute our NTC friends tell us ... that Al Qathafi's clan is no longer a threat to the Libyan people, at that very minute, coalition military operations will stop," Sarkozy said, adding that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon would also be consulted.

France was the first country to recognise Jibril's government. His trip also was aimed at preparing an international conference on September 1 to discuss how the world community can help Libya move beyond Al Qathafi.

Sarkozy said countries such as China, India, Russia and South Africa would be invited to send envoys for the Paris conference next week, attended also by NTC representatives.

Jibril was to travel to Milan on Thursday to meet with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, which has served as NATO's base of operations in the campaign and has strong economic, political and historic ties to Libya.

Jibril indicated the rebels still need help, saying the fighting wasn't yet finished.

But he said plans for the future were already taking shape - and his government was talking to the UN about sending up to 200 monitors to help ensure security in Tripoli.

As for the transition, Jibril said a commission created with members from around Libya would write a new constitution, which would be put up for a referendum, but he didn't specify a timetable.

Once it's adopted, elections for parliament would be held within the next four months - and its President would be Libya's interim leader until a presidential election sometime later.

"The mission of protecting civilians is not over," said Jibril. "The other bigger and fiercer battle has not started yet: it is the rebuilding of Libya."

In the postwar period, a new army would be created, he said, and the National Transitional Council planned "to call on all those took up arms to join either the new army or the new police force that we will constitute in coming days."

The US and its allies have been trying for more than two weeks to get the UN Security Council committee that monitors sanctions against Libya to agree to unfreeze the assets. The decision to lift the sanctions must be unanimous.

Council diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions have been private, said all 15 nations agreed except South Africa, so the US, Britain and France decided to introduce a resolution instead.

"We expect it to have the necessary support to pass," a US diplomat said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly.

South Africa's UN ambassador was not immediately available to comment.

Sarkozy alluded to South Africa's reticence and said he knows "the story of President (Jacob) Zuma ... to listen to the aspiration of peoples to free themselves from their chains."

"I trust the statesman qualities of Mr Zuma, who sees the situation and sees the hopes of the Libyan people who are demanding the departure of the Al Qathafi dictator," he said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has said Britain hopes to release about $20 billion in frozen Libyan assets, though it wasn't immediately clear if any of that would be covered under the new resolution.

Libyans Face a New Challenge: Expelling the Fear That Al Qathafi Instilled in Them

(N. Y. Times) - When rebels broke through the gates of Col. Muammar Al QathafiÂ’s compound this week, Abdul Rahman Sharif was so moved that despite the gunfire he took his daughters, ages 11, 15 and 18, with him to see it for themselves.

Then after dark he returned with his wife. And the next day, as more bullets flew, he visited the compound with his 90-year-old mother.

Looking back at the dizzying collapse of Colonel Al QathafiÂ’s terrifying power as he and his mother drove home, he said, Libyans now face a more subtle challenge.

“We need to get rid of the little Muammar Al Qathafi inside each of us,” he said, describing a combination of anxiety, lawlessness and cynicism he attributed to four decades under Colonel Al Qathafi’s arbitrary authoritarianism. “Some people hated him, some people would die for him, but even if you did not like him he affected you,” Mr. Sharif, 56, said.

Residents of Tripoli keep venturing out in the still-contested streets to gawk as jubilant rebels overrun the iconic backdrops of Colonel Al Qathafi’s theatrical rule - his barracks and mansion at the Bab al-Azziziyah compound, the old city square he named after his “green” revolution.

And they reflected on the unexpected brittleness of his hold on the city. Many said that his power, like that of so many tyrants, was rooted mainly in the fear he had instilled in Libyans, until a few rebel victories kicked it away.

“When the rebellion started six months ago, we knew it would be bloody,” Mr. Sharif said. “We thought you were going to see more bloodshed here than you did, because he was a bloodthirsty man.” And even as Bab al-Azziziyah fell, many in Tripoli still felt pangs of fear.

False rumours swept the city that the colonel had poisoned the water in a final act of spite. “See what he has done?” Mr. Sharif asked.

Look at Libyan drivers, he said, pointing toward cars swerving by: no one followed the rules, because no expected them to be fairly enforced. “We did not feel like it was our country,” he said.

In the past few days, residents said, they watched in astonishment as the police and military forces they had dreaded for so long melted away in a matter of minutes. Ali el-Ayan, an aircraft maintenance engineer who was visiting the cityÂ’s Green Square in his neighbourhood with his daughters, said that he had watched Colonel Al QathafiÂ’s troops fill the area with soldiers and weapons on Saturday night in anticipation of a rebel uprising.

He was inside watching Al Jazeera when it reported that the rebels had reached the square. He ran out to watch as they arrived from four directions in a seemingly coordinated attack.

“It was a good plan,” Mr. Ayan said. “Within half an hour the square was clear of any Al Qathafi army at all. They left their weapons and equipment and some of their uniforms and ran off, and it was a great night for Libyans.”

Like several other residents, Mr. Ayan said he had always felt a visceral shudder whenever he passed Bab al-Azziziyah. When the walls of the compound finally broke open, he said, he thought of an iconic image from the end of the cold war, when Russians shook off their fear of the Kremlin.

Just as Boris N. Yeltsin mounted a tank at the Russian Parliament, Libyans had taken their former tyrant’s house, he said. Then he recalled President Ronald Reagan’s words after he ordered a 1986 airstrike on the Libyan compound to punish Colonel Al Qathafi for his support of terrorism abroad: “ ‘We have done what we had to do.’ ”

“The Libyan people did what needed to be done,” Mr. Ayan said.

A smaller re-enactment of the Al Qathafi governmentÂ’s collapse played out Wednesday at the Rixos Hotel, where a handful of guards had detained about 30 foreign journalists long after the senior officials working there had fled.

It was at the hotel that Colonel Al QathafiÂ’s son Seif al-Islam had made a surprise appearance on Monday, vowing that the Al Qathafi forces were poised to retake the city. Several journalists said Wednesday that the guards holding them were so cut off from other sources of information that they did not know just how wrong Colonel Al QathafiÂ’s son was.

But on Wednesday, several journalists said, two Arabic-speaking journalists sat down with the chief guard to lay out the situation. “Look, they all left you, all the big guys are gone,” an Iraqi cameraman told them, journalists present said.

The chief guard broke down in tears. Terrified of rebel reprisals, the guards surrendered their weapons to the journalists and insisted on having the Red Cross escort them out of the hotel.

In the same way, others said that the recent defection of top officials from the Al Qathafi government had pushed the uprising to a tipping point. Mr. Sharif, an employee of Libya’s National Investment Company, said he had watched for years as others were promoted over him because he refused to join the Al Qathafi political machine and its various “revolutionary committees.”

The companyÂ’s chief may have earned mediocre returns but he was a paragon of political fidelity.

“He was high up in the revolutionary committee and everything was all right, and then the next day I saw on television that he had fled,” Mr. Sharif said.

When his boss defected, he said, he knew the end was near. Then, after evening prayer on Saturday night, he heard young men all over his neighbourhood and the city pouring out of mosques, calling out: “God is great! God is great!”

He ran to his door to add his voice to the shouts. “I am 56,” Mr. Sharif said, “but this revolution makes me feel like it is the ’70s, like I am young again.”

On Wednesday, his mother carried with her a bottle of homemade Libyan perfume to Bab al-Azziziyah to sprinkle as a tribute on the revolutionaries.

She said her father had died at 90 in 1972, just three years after Colonel Al Qathafi had come to power. She recalled that her father had told the family: “You will see a dark day under him. Thank God I am not going to be here to see it.”

Tripoli awash in guns, rumours amid Al Qathafi hunt

(CNN)-Fugitive Libyan leader Muammar Al Qathafi's compound was strewn with shell casings and litter two days after its capture by rebel forces, while the bodies of a dozen bound men lay in a nearby intersection.

The sprawling complex was littered with spent anti-aircraft shells, with rebel fighters picking through the detritus of the life Al Qathafi's supporters left behind when they fled. An armoured BMW sedan sat abandoned in a garage near the "House of Resistance," the bombed-out building that Al Qathafi left unrepaired as a monument to a 1986 U.S. airstrike that killed one of his daughters.

Several NATO airstrikes and the onslaught that led to the fall of the Bab al-Azziziyah compound on Tuesday inflicted more damage on the site, the symbolic heart of Al Qathafi's nearly 42-year rule.

But during a visit by CNN to part of the compound on Thursday, there was no sign of the network of tunnels and bunkers long believed to have been built beneath Al Qathafi's headquarters. Nor was there any sign of Al Qathafi or his sons, the subjects of an intense manhunt since their regime crumbled.

The streets outside Bab al-Azziziyah are awash in guns and rumours, including one that saw rebel fighters surround a nearby apartment complex Thursday on a tip that Al Qathafi was inside. He was not found.

The National Transitional Council, the rebel leadership, says it is determined to flush him out with minimal civilian losses. "We don't want to spill a lot of blood, you know, because they are our brothers," one rebel fighter said.

At a nearby intersection, a dozen bodies lay in the sun, some of them with their hands bound. Rebel fighters say the men were executed by Al Qathafi's retreating forces. But the bodies appear to be those of black Africans, who made up a large portion of the pro-Al Qathafi forces, raising questions about whether the men may have been executed by the rebels.

To the south of the compound, which is located near Tripoli's Mediterranean shore, fighting between rebel fighters and Al Qathafi loyalists persisted. Snipers and mortar shells continued to inflict casualties on hundreds of civilians, said Kirstie Campbell, a worker for the International Medical Corps in Tripoli.

"I've worked in war zones for 10 years, but this is pretty bad," she said.

U.N. Releases $1.5 Billion in Frozen Al Qathafi Assets to Aid Rebuilding of Libya

(N.Y. Times) - Even with Col. Muammar Al Qathafi still on the run, the nations that aided LibyaÂ’s rebellion moved swiftly Thursday to release billions of dollars of cash needed for the difficult - and, for some foreign companies, potentially lucrative - task of rebuilding the country after six months of fighting.

The United Nations Security Council approved an immediate infusion of $1.5 billion that the United States seized last spring.

Officials said the money was urgently needed to provide basic services, especially electricity, and, perhaps as important, to build political support for LibyaÂ’s rebel leaders, known as the Transitional National Council, as they try to consolidate control of the country after 41 years of Colonel Al QathafiÂ’s government.

“Al Qathafi hasn’t paid salaries in months,” Jeffrey D. Feltman, an assistant secretary of state, said in a telephone interview from Istanbul, where diplomats from 28 nations and 7 international organizations met on Thursday to discuss preparations for a post-Al Qathafi Libya. “It would be a real boost for the NTC. to be able to do that.”

The Security CouncilÂ’s action came after leading countries made new pledges of financial and diplomatic support, laying the foundation for new relations with a nation presumably more amenable to interaction and alliance with the West than it was under Colonel Al Qathafi.

With so much uncertainty over the governance of Libya, though, none of the money will be given directly to the rebels, but instead will be dispersed on their behalf by the United States or international agencies to ensure it goes directly to humanitarian needs.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, meeting with one of the Libyan rebel officials, joined other leaders in offering to aid the nascent government, promising to unfreeze roughly $500 million. The Security CouncilÂ’s action on Thursday so far affects only the $1.5 billion in American jurisdiction.

Eni S.p.A., ItalyÂ’s largest oil company and the biggest oil producer in Libya, also pledged to supply gasoline and diesel fuel on an emergency basis and on credit, to be paid later in crude oil when production resumes.

The head of the Transitional National Council, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, explicitly promised to reward those nations that backed LibyaÂ’s revolt with contracts in the stateÂ’s postwar reconstruction.

“We promise to favour the countries which helped us, especially in the development of Libya,” he said in the rebels’ eastern stronghold, Benghazi. “We will deal with them according to the support which they gave us.”

The Libyan council has asked the United Nations to release as much as $5 billion of an estimated $160 billion in Libyan assets frozen abroad after the Security Council imposed sanctions on Colonel Al QathafiÂ’s government shortly after the popular uprising began in February.

Much of those assets are property, investments or other fixed assets that cannot easily be cashed in without the authority of a recognised Libyan government, which legally remains very much up in the air. Of the nearly $38 billion in assets frozen by the United States, for example, only about $3 billion is in cash, according to the State Department.

The United States had asked the committee that oversees United Nations sanctions - made up of the same 15 members of the Security Council itself - for a special exception to return $1.5 billion.

But it encountered strong opposition, particularly from South Africa, whose leaders long had close relations with Colonel Al Qathafi. The sanctions committee requires unanimous consent, which South Africa blocked, even as events in Libya rapidly unfolded.

American and British officials took the usual diplomatic step of publicly identifying South AfricaÂ’s opposition and vowed to force a vote on a new resolution on Thursday afternoon, which South Africa alone would have been unable to block.

South Africa objected to releasing the frozen money in part “because it implied recognition” of the rebels, one American official said, but ultimately relented after the sanction committee’s decision deleted explicit reference to the rebel council.

The $1.5 billion in assets is divided into three roughly equal parts of $500 million - none of which will go directly into the coffers of the rebels.

One-third will pay international organizations like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for past and future humanitarian assistance, while another will go from American accounts directly to companies that have been providing fuel for electricity in civilian areas under rebel control.

The third $500 million will go to a special fund in Qatar, controlled by a committee of nations, that disperses money for basic services like health care, education and food. Many countries, including Turkey most recently, have pledged money through the fund.

The transitional council, already recognised by the United States and many other countries as the recognised authority in Libya, is scrambling on the diplomatic and political front to catch up to its surprisingly rapid military advances this week. And it appeared to be succeeding, with the Arab League inviting the council to represent Libya at its next meeting later this month.

The diplomats meeting in Istanbul - including representatives of the United Nations and the Arab League - promised in a statement to provide the council with “the legal, political and financial means necessary to form an interim government of Libya.”

They also called on the Security Council to free all the assets “in an expedited manner” and said that the United Nations would oversee “international efforts” to rebuild Libya, a demand that Russia and China emphasized on Thursday.

The nations in Istanbul, meantime, pledged $2.5 billion in aid in all, according to Fathi Baja, a member of the rebel council. “We need more,” he said, “but this will be a very useful chunk to take care of the immediate needs.”

Mr. Abdul-Jalil said that “the biggest destabilizing element” would be a failure of the rebel administration to deliver services and pay the salaries of officials who had not been paid for months.

With fighting still under way, it is too early to estimate the scope of the reconstruction needed in Libya, though officials acknowledged that the effort would be immense.

At the same time, officials said, much of it can be paid for by Libya itself from the Al Qathafi-era assets and a resumption of the countryÂ’s oil industry, the infrastructure of which is not believed to have been badly damaged in the fighting.

“The overwhelming bulk of Libya’s needs,” Mr. Feltman said, “are going to be paid for by the Libyans themselves.”

(Aljazeera.net) - The dead men at Maitiga Hospital are hard evidence that the fall of Tripoli was not without its atrocities.

From inside a makeshift prison across the street from Muammar Al QathafiÂ’s compound, Osama Mansour el-Hadi listened to the beginning of the end.

It was Tuesday, and rebels had begun to overrun the sprawling 6km-square complex, known as the Bab al-Azziziyah, where Al QathafiÂ’s palace and the homes of his innermost clique sat in a warren of offices and military bunkers.

Gunfire rang out, Hadi told Al Jazeera, and cries of “God is great!” echoed over the compound’s walls.

For many Libyans, it was a joyous moment; the most symbolic assault yet on the reviled regime that had shackled the country for more than 40 years.

But for Hadi and 25 other civilian men, held by armed Al Qathafi loyalists at a rundown apartment building now serving as an war zone detention centre, a horrific massacre was about to begin.

As machine gun and artillery fire engulfed at the compound across the street, the captors marched Hadi and the other men into the street at gunpoint. They were lined up with the walls of the Bab al-Azziziyah behind them as the sounds of the regimeÂ’s downfall split the air.

Then Al QathafiÂ’s gunmen opened fire, spraying a barrage of bullets into their captivesÂ’ heads, necks and chests.

Hadi collapsed into a pile of shuddering bodies, his shoulder, hand and right thigh shattered by bullets. Another prisoner escaped, Hadi said, and the murderers fled. As of Thursday, there had been no arrests or any known investigation into the grisly killing.

The bodies were found a day later and taken to TripoliÂ’s Maitiga Hospital, a facility once-reserved for Al QathafiÂ’s military brass and high-ranking officials that now lies in rebel-controlled territory.

It was here, in a sparse and filthy hospital room, that Hadi told his story to Al Jazeera on Thursday. He was the only known survivor of the summary execution.

Elsewhere in the hospital, 15 of his fellow prisoners were laid out in the corner of the car park under a metal roof. Covered only partially by blood-stained, plastic sheets, some of the victimsÂ’ ghastly wounds were exposed. The smell was gagging.

Some men had been identified. One man, Abdelsalem, came from the town of Taghma. Others were simply marked "non-Muslim" for burial purposes.

In the hospital room, HadiÂ’s forehead creased with pain as he spoke. Someone had draped the tri-colour rebel flag behind his head and over his shoulders. His father, in a pristine-white jalabeya and skullcap, stood watching at his bedside.

Hadi originally comes from Badr, in the western Nafusa Mountains. Rebels there led the advance on Tripoli, but HadiÂ’s town was sympathetic to Al Qathafi. He and his father were not. During the final push on the capital, the two left for the capital.

Hadi was arrested on August 15, five days before the uprising began in the city. He said he had been staying at a house in the Janzour district when 15 armed men came, blindfolded him and took him away. He said he was innocent and claimed to not have been part of the opposition.

Others he met in the makeshift prison had been there longer, for more than two weeks. Most, he said, claimed they were civilians, picked up off the street while walking or riding bicycles.

The guards gave their captives little food to eat, cursed at them, and doused them with urine, Hadi said.

Outside HadiÂ’s room, the packed intensive care unit testified to the ongoing clashes in Tripoli. Nearly 30 young men lay injured, awaiting treatment.

Youssef Hodiry, an orthopaedic surgeon from the United Kingdom and had recently arrived from Misurata, said the hospital had few medical staff, most had run away or were too afraid to come to work.

By Thursday, Maitiga Hospital was running low on tetanus shots and immunoglobin syrums, doctors said. Representatives from the International Medical Corps had arrived to assess the situation. They photographed the bodies of the dead prisoners as well.

According to Mohammed Rashed, a general surgeon from the United Kingdom who had arrived in Tripoli from Misurata just days ago, the hospital had no forensic surgeons to examine the murdered men.

Nobody had conducted any autopsies, he said, adding that two of the bodies had already been taken away by relatives for a funeral.

Tripoli is these days flooded with rumours of other massacres. Locals speak of prison executions and rebel corpses found in shipping containers.

As the truth comes out, the dead men who were laid in a car park at Maitiga Hospital are hard evidence that the fall of Tripoli had not been free of warÂ’s atrocities.

Tripoli chaos raises fear of missiles going to terrorists

(L.A. Times) - The U.S., mindful of lessons from Iraq, has urged Libyan rebels to secure weapons depots to prevent shoulder-fired missiles and others from falling into the hands of Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

In November 2002, Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists fired two shoulder-launched missiles at a chartered Israeli passenger jet as it took off from Mombasa, Kenya.

Both shots missed, but it was an unnerving reminder that portable surface-to-air missiles have hit 40 civilian aircraft since 1975, mostly in war zones, causing 28 crashes and killing more than 800 people, according to a State Department report.

The collapse of Muammar Al Qathafi's regime in Libya has prompted fear that terrorists may obtain shoulder-fired missiles from Libyan weapons depots, just as Iraqi insurgents pilfered arsenals after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Pentagon officials have estimated that Al Qathafi's forces had 20,000 portable missiles. Most are Soviet-made SA-7s from the 1970s, however, and may not be operational. But a Russian company recently said that it had sold Al Qathafi's military an unspecified number of SA-24s, which are more modern.

The Obama administration has urged Libyan rebels to secure the depots and is cautioning nearby countries to watch for missiles or other munitions being smuggled across their borders.

Some evidence suggests that has happened.

In April, Chad's President, Idris Deby, said a cache of surface-to-air missiles and launchers from Libya had been smuggled to Al Qaeda's African affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Algerian officials have given similar accounts.

U.S. officials have not publicly confirmed the smuggling reports, but Pentagon spokesman Dave Lapan said Libyan missiles are a concern because of their portability.

"Together with the State Department, we are working with our allies and partners in the region to help prevent the proliferation of Libya's inventory of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles," he said Thursday.

The State Department has awarded $3 million to two humanitarian groups - the British branch of the Mines Advisory Group and the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action - to help clear weapons, mines and munitions in rebel-held parts of Libya.

The Libyan conflict has limited the groups' access, however, and spokesmen for the two groups said that, as of Thursday, they had found and destroyed only four missiles, which are called Man-Portable Air defence Systems.

Libya has at least 523 arms bunkers, said Valeria Fabbroni of the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action. The rebels have tried to put up fences and post guards as they capture sites, but the challenge is "massive," she said.

"I think the risk is significant because the forces controlling Libya right now are not well organized, they're not well disciplined, they don't have formal security protocols," said J. Christian Kessler, who retired in 2008 as head of the State Department's Office of Conventional Arms Threat Reduction.

"My guess is that the closest thing they have to inventory on ammo is, 'Nuts, we're getting low, find some more.'"

"We need to assume that X percent of the inventory will leak," he said. "Where it leaks to, how badly it leaks, those are guesses."

Terrorists have never downed a commercial airliner with a portable missile. But insurgent groups have shot down a chartered helicopter and cargo planes in Iraq and Somalia in recent years.

In 2002, Abu Huzifa, an Al Qaeda operative from Sudan, acknowledged firing an SA-7 at a U.S. military plane as it took off from Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. It missed, and he was later arrested.

The missile was from the same production batch that was used in the failed attack against the Israeli aircraft later that year in Kenya, investigators determined.

(Daily Star, Beirut) - Muammar Al Qathafi taunted his Libyan enemies and their Western backers Thursday as LibyaÂ’s new leaders announced that it would govern the country from Tripoli.

Rebel forces battled pockets of loyalists across Tripoli in an ever more urgent quest to find and silence the fugitive strongman.

rumours of Al Qathafi or his sons being cornered, even sighted, swirled among excitable rebel fighters engaged in heavy machine-gun and rocket exchanges. But two days after his compound was overrun, hopes of a swift end to six months of war were still being frustrated by fierce rear-guard actions.

Western powers demanded Al QathafiÂ’s surrender and worked to release frozen Libyan state funds, hoping to ease hardships and start reconstruction in the oil-rich state.

But with loyalists holding out in the capital, in Al QathafiÂ’s coastal home city and deep in the inland desert, violence could go on for some time, testing the ability of the government in waiting to keep order.

“The tribes … must march on Tripoli,” Al Qathafi said in an audio message broadcast on a sympathetic television channel. “Do not leave Tripoli to those rats, kill them, defeat them quickly.”

“The enemy is delusional, NATO is retreating,” he shouted, sounding firmer and clearer than in a similar speech released Wednesday. Though his enemies believe Al Qathafi, 69, is still in the capital, they fear he could flee by long-prepared escape routes, using tunnels and bunkers, to rally an insurgency.

Diehards numbering perhaps in the hundreds were keeping at bay squads of irregular, anti-Al Qathafi fighters who had swept into the capital Sunday and who were now rushing from one site to another, firing assault rifles, machine guns and anti-aircraft cannon bolted to the backs of pick-up trucks.

In a southern district close to the notorious prison of Abu Salim, the rebel forces launched a concerted assault, sweeping from house to house.

While random gunfire broke out periodically across the city, some of its 2 million residents ventured out to stock up on supplies. Aid agencies sounded an alarm about food, water and also medical supplies, especially for hundreds of wounded.

New leadership said it had found huge stockpiles in Tripoli which would meet all demands for food, drugs and fuel.

In another sign of optimism, the official taking charge of financial and energy affairs told Reuters Libya hoped to resume exporting crude oil next month and that damage to oil facilities during the fighting had been less than feared.

“The NOC initial estimate is that we can have about 500,000 to 600,000 barrels within two to three weeks,” Ali Tarhouni said. “And then we ramp this up to the normal, which is about 1.6 [million]. My expectation is that this will be done within a year or so.

“The state of the oil fields are a lot better than expected … Most of the fields are more than 90 percent fine.”

It was the first time an official from the rebel National Transitional Council was seen in the capital taking up the reins of government.

Nonetheless, in order to begin installing an administration in a nation run by an eccentric personality cult for 42 years, to offer jobs to young men now bearing arms and to heal ethnic, tribal and other divisions that have been exacerbated by civil war, LibyaÂ’s new masters are anxious for hard cash quickly.

“We need urgent help,” Mahmoud Jibril, the head of the government-in-waiting, told Italy’s premier Silvio Berlusconi in Milan as Western leaders persuaded others at the U.N. to unblock $1.5 billion of Libyan foreign assets.

Some governments, notably in Africa where there was some sympathy for Al QathafiÂ’s view of his Western enemies as colonialist aggressors, had been reluctant to agree so far. After a meeting of officials in Istanbul, the Contact Group of allies against Al Qathafi called on Libyans to avoid revenge.

“The participants attached utmost importance to the realization of national reconciliation in Libya,” it said. “They agreed that such a process should be based on principles of inclusiveness, avoidance of retribution and vengeance.”

The group also urged the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution freeing up cash quickly. Jibril said the uprising could fall apart if funds were not forthcoming quickly. “The biggest destabilizing element would be the failure … to deliver the necessary services and pay the salaries of the people who have not been paid for months,” he added.

Al QathafiÂ’s opponents fear that he may rally an insurgency, as did Saddam Hussein in Iraq, should he remain at large and, perhaps, in control of funds salted away for such a purpose.

Western powers, mindful of the bloodshed in Iraq, have made clear they do not want to engage their troops in Libya. But a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said Washington would look favourably on any Libyan request for U.N. police assistance - something some say might aid a transition to democracy.

Rebel leaders, offering a $1.6 million reward, say the war will be over only when Al Qathafi is found, “dead or alive.”

The ex-international high representative in Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, told Reuters there was a need for speed if LibyaÂ’s new rulers were to avoid a lingering threat from their predecessor, unlike what transpired in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq.

“The best time to capture these defeated leaders is immediately after the conflict finishes,” Ashdown said. “The longer it takes the more chance they have of being spirited away to a place which is much more difficult to find.”

The United States and NATO are also deeply concerned about possible looting and resale of weapons from Libyan arsenals as Muammar Al QathafiÂ’s rule crumbles, though the U.S. State Department said it believes LibyaÂ’s stocks of concentrated uranium and mustard agent are secure.

With fighting raging in Tripoli, there was evidence of the kind of bitter bloodletting in recent days that the rebel leaders are anxious to stop in the interests of uniting Libyans, including former Al Qathafi supporters, in a democracy.

A Reuters correspondent counted 30 bodies, apparently of troops and gunmen who had fought for Al Qathafi, at a site in central Tripoli. At least two had their hands bound. One was strapped to a hospital trolley with a drip still in his arm.

All the bodies had been riddled with bullets.

Elsewhere, a British medical worker said she had counted 17 bodies who she believed were of prisoners executed by Al QathafiÂ’s forces. One wounded man said he had survived the incident, when, he said, prison guards had sprayed inmates with gunfire Tuesday as the rebel forces entered Al QathafiÂ’s compound.

(Washington Post) - Forty feet underground, beneath a sprawling Al Qathafi family mansion, lies a bunker that would have made a great place to hide.

The entrance is hard to find: To get there, you go past the front door equipped with a fingerprint reader, through the garden and behind neatly trimmed shrubs, where there is a mysterious passageway. From there, itÂ’s three flights of stairs down until you arrive at a one-foot-thick steel door. Behind the door, thereÂ’s a lair straight out of a James Bond film.

The bunker, discovered by rebel forces who have swept through this city in recent days, is only one of many that Muammar Al Qathafi and his family had constructed to ensure their personal safety should life aboveground became hazardous.

As the rebel forces continue to hunt for Al Qathafi and his sons, the nest of bunkers and tunnels beneath this capital city has become a prime focus of their search.

This bunker is beneath a mansion owned by Al QathafiÂ’s son Mutassim Al Qathafi, 34, who acted as his fatherÂ’s security adviser and who met with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2009.

In the house, which was under construction when the rebels overran Tripoli, abstract paintings hang on the walls above leather sofas. Features include a gym, a pool and two bars. Copies of Elle and Vogue magazines, and a brochure advertising a 280-foot yacht available to “exclusive clients,” are scattered on the floor. Thirty-foot walls ring the house.

“We lived in poverty while he lived like a king,” said Ashraf Al Khaderi, a young physician who lives in the neighbourhood and who gave visitors a tour Thursday. “This man was not a Muslim. I can’t believe they ruled us for 40 years.”

The setup underground is perhaps even more elaborate. The bunker includes an operating room. When rebels and neighbours discovered it, they quickly shifted the medical supplies to civilian hospitals, which are in dire need of equipment.

A generator is set up to provide electricity and water. Sewage and drainage pipes hang neatly from 10-foot-high ceilings. Versace clothes line the closets.

The walls are painted white, with green lines leading to another steel door. Behind it are living quarters, which, as of Thursday, had been trashed, presumably by rebels searching for Muammar Al Qathafi and his possessions. Pillows and mattresses had been cut up, lining the bedrooms and bathrooms with feathers and foam.

Atop a desk that had been kicked over, there was a brochure for a German company advertising a program for intercepting e-mails and sniffing out Internet protocol addresses.

“This illustrates the mind-set of a freak,” Khaderi said of Al Qathafi. “He was always living in fear. He has prepared himself for this moment.”

The elder Al Qathafi, who apparently issued an audio message Thursday, has said he will never leave Tripoli. A son, Seif al-Islam Al Qathafi, has managed to pop up at locations across the city, suggesting to many that he may be using an intricate network of tunnels.

In Mutassim Al QathafiÂ’s bunker, there were more rooms and corridors, and a long passageway led to a steel door that remained locked Thursday.

“There could be people behind there,” Khaderi said. “They could still be hiding here.”

(UPI) - U.S., European and Asian companies are scrambling to get back into Libya to grab a slice of its oil wealth, even though Muammar Al Qathafi's diehard loyalists refuse to submit to seemingly triumphant rebel forces.

Firms from Britain, France and Italy, the rebel coalition's most ardent supporters against Al Qathafi in Libya's civil war, are the likely front-runners. BP of the United Kingdom, Total of France and ENI of Italy had major projects in Libya before the rebellion against Al Qathafi began six months ago.

ENI was producing 196,000 barrels per day before the war. It was returning technicians to Libya even before Al Qathafi's fortified compound in Tripoli was overrun by rebels this week, so it may be the first to resume production.

BP is likely to push to launch a $1 billion deep-water exploration program in the Gulf of Sidra, part of a $900 million deal signed with Al Qathafi in May 2007. Drilling was delayed in 2010 following the company's Gulf of Mexico disaster. It had been scheduled to start this year but the war prevented that.

Libya needs a major strike like that because production at most of its mature fields is declining. The country has reserves of 41.5 billion barrels, the ninth largest in the world.

Britain, France and Italy have a long history of involvement in Libya, which from 1911 comprised Italian colonies in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica and a French one in Fezzan.

These were conquered by the British in 1943. Libya gained its independence under King Idris I in 1951. He was overthrown in a bloodless military coup led by Al Qathafi and other officers in September 1969.

Following the discovery of oil in Libya in 1959, U.S., British and Italian oil companies were at the forefront of the country's emergent oil industry, nationalized after the 1969 coup.

Britain and France were driving forces behind the intervention by NATO forces to support the rebels after the uprising broke out in February. France was the first Western state to recognize the rebel National Transitional Council.

For three decades, Al Qathafi was the sworn enemy of the West because of his support for international terrorism.

It was only after he surrendered his clandestine nuclear program in 2003 and renounced terrorism, that foreign oil companies were allowed back into Libya.

Al Qathafi needed them to salvage Libya's all-important oil industry, just as the rebel coalition does now.

In 2003, the oil industry was, and remains today, Libya's economic lifeline. But back then it had come to a virtual standstill because of international sanctions that were lifted in 2004.

Libya produces high-quality "sweet" crude that is highly prized because it needs little refining.

China, which is grabbing oil deals across Africa and increasingly the Middle East as well to fuel its ever-expanding economy, could also be a key player in the months ahead.

Beijing didn't support NATO intervention in the Libyan conflict. But Chinese emissaries made their first contact with the anti-Al Qathafi rebels in early March in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a key rebel ally.

Beijing clearly had its eyes on Libyan oil and wanted to establish links with the insurgents under Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council, in case they triumphed over Al Qathafi.

On Monday, as Al Qathafi's embattled forces seemed to making a last stand, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu noted that Beijing "respects the choice of the Libyan people" and was ready to participate in the country's reconstruction.

It remains to be seen whether the NTC, a coalition of groups with widely differing agendas, will be able to work together to produce a coherent government and economic policy for the war-shattered nation as swiftly as possible since it provides the lion's share of state revenues.

The extent of damage to oil and gas infrastructure is still not clear but there was heavy fighting around the key oil centres of Brega and Ras Lanuf on the Mediterranean coastline.

Some industry analysts estimate limited production could resume within a few weeks.

But it could take at least three years to get oil production back to the pre-conflict level of around 1.6 million barrels per day, or 2 percent of global output.

Muammar Al Qathafi either in southern Tripoli or fled to desert, says former top aide

(Al Arabiya) - Embattled Libyan leader Muammar Al Qathafi is either in southern Tripoli or has already fled to the desert, his defected former prime minister Abdessalam Jalloud said on Thursday.

“He has only four people left around him. There are two possibilities: either he is hiding in the southern part of Tripoli or he left some time ago,” Jalloud, who fled Tripoli and has been in Italy since Saturday, told a press conference in Rome.

In the first scenario, Al Qathafi will remain holed up in the south of Tripoli “until roads reopen and then he will emerge perhaps disguised as a woman or something else to leave” the capital, Jalloud said.

“The second possibility is that he already fled a while ago and is either at the border with Algeria, or in Sirte or Sabha, and he will then cross the desert,” the ex-premier said.

Jalloud was Al QathafiÂ’s right-hand man in the 1970s and 1980s but had been increasingly distanced from politics starting in the 1990s following a reported fallout with his childhood friend.

On Sunday he said he believed it was too late for Al Qathafi to strike a deal to leave power and he would likely be killed.

Jalloud said he has had contacts with the leaders of the National Transitional Council, and had received their approval to encourage Libyans to rebel against Al Qathafi and mobilise support abroad.

While not part of the NTC, Jalloud said they were “in the same boat” and that he plans to form a secular, liberal, nationalist party.

Jalloud said he tried to escape Libya six times by sea and 12 times by land during recent months.

Italian media has speculated he was finally able to get out only with the assistance of foreign diplomats or intelligence agents, or the help of Italian oil company ENI.

Jalloud insisted however that he is not beholden to anyone.

“I am a free person, completely independent. I don’t owe anything to Italy, or Russia, or France,” he said in response to a question from AFP.

(Reuters) - Fugitive strongman Muammar Al Qathafi taunted his Libyan enemies and their Western backers from his hiding place as NATO targeted his hometown and rebels announced a move to govern the country from Tripoli.

rumours of Al Qathafi or his sons being cornered, even sighted, swirled among excitable rebel fighters engaged in heavy machine-gun and rocket exchanges. But even after his compound was overrun on Tuesday, hopes of a swift end to six months of war were still being frustrated by fierce rearguard actions.

Western powers demanded Al Qathafi's surrender and worked to help the opposition start developing the trappings of government and bureaucracy lacking in the oil-producing state that has been ruled by an eccentric personality cult for the past 42 years.

The United States and South Africa struck a deal to allow the release of $1.5 billion in frozen funds for humanitarian aid and other civilian needs, U.N. diplomats said.

But with loyalists holding out in the capital, in Al Qathafi's coastal home city and deep in the inland desert, violence could go on for some time, testing the ability of the government-in-waiting to keep order when it moves from its eastern stronghold.

"The tribes ... must march on Tripoli," Al Qathafi said in an audio message broadcast on a sympathetic TV channel. "Do not leave Tripoli to those rats, kill them, defeat them quickly.

"The enemy is delusional, NATO is retreating," he shouted, sounding firmer and clearer than in a similar speech released on Wednesday. Though his enemies believe Al Qathafi, 69, is still in the capital, they fear he could flee by long-prepared escape routes, using tunnels and bunkers, to rally an insurgency.

Diehards numbering perhaps in the hundreds were keeping at bay squads of irregular, anti-Al Qathafi fighters who had swept into the capital on Sunday and who were now rushing from one site to another, firing assault rifles, machine-guns and anti-aircraft cannon bolted to the backs of pick-up trucks.

In a southern district close to the notorious prison of Abu Salim, rebel forces launched a concerted assault, sweeping from house to house and taking prisoners.

Elsewhere, pro-Al Qathafi forces shelled rebel positions at Tripoli's airport, and NATO warplanes bombed Sirte to the east - Al Qathafi's birthplace.

The rebels' Colonel Hisham Buhagiar said they were targeting several areas in their hunt for Al Qathafi. "We are sending special forces every day to hunt down Al Qathafi. We have one unit that does intelligence and other units that hunt him down," he said.

While random gunfire broke out periodically across Tripoli, some of its 2 million residents ventured out to stock up on supplies for the first time in days.

Aid agencies sounded an alarm about food, water and medical supplies, especially for hundreds of wounded. But the new leadership said it had found huge stockpiles in Tripoli which would ease the shortages.

In a sign Libya's rebel authority was gradually taking over the levers of power from Al Qathafi, National Transitional Council official Ali Tarhouni said the body had begun its planned move from Benghazi to Tripoli.

"I proclaim the beginning of the resumption of the work of the executive office in Tripoli," Tarhouni, who is in charge of oil and financial matters for the council, told reporters at a briefing in the capital.

The shift is seen as a crucial step to smoothing over rifts in the country, fragmented by regional and tribal divisions, particularly between east and west.

Nonetheless, in order to begin installing an administration to offer jobs to young men now bearing arms and to heal ethnic, tribal and other divisions that have been exacerbated by civil war, Libya's new masters are anxious for hard cash quickly.

The deal between the United States and South Africa would allow the release of the funds without a Security Council vote on a draft resolution that Washington submitted on Wednesday after South Africa blocked a U.S. request to disburse the money in the U.N. Libya sanctions committee, U.N. diplomats said.

Some governments, notably in Africa where there was some sympathy for Al Qathafi's view of his Western enemies as colonialist aggressors, had been reluctant to agree to it.

Speaking in Italy, the head of the rebel government, Mahmoud Jibril said the uprising, the bloodiest so far of the Arab Spring, could fall apart if funds were not forthcoming quickly: "The biggest destabilizing element would be the failure ... to deliver the necessary services and pay the salaries of the people who have not been paid for months.

"Our priorities cannot be carried out by the government without having the necessary money immediately," he said.

After a meeting of officials in Istanbul, the Contact Group of allies against Al Qathafi called on Libyans to avoid revenge.

"The participants attached utmost importance to the realization of national reconciliation in Libya," it said. "They agreed that such a process should be based on principles of inclusiveness, avoidance of retribution and vengeance."

Al Qathafi's opponents fear that he may rally an insurgency, as did Saddam Hussein in Iraq, should he remain at large and, perhaps, in control of funds salted away for such a purpose.

Western powers, mindful of the bloodshed in Iraq, have made clear they do not want to engage their troops in Libya. But a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said Washington would look favourably on any Libyan request for U.N. police assistance - something some say might aid a transition to democracy.

Rebel leaders, offering a million-dollar reward, say the war will be over only when Al Qathafi is found, "dead or alive".

The ex-international high representative in Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, told Reuters there was a need for speed if Libya's new rulers were to avoid a lingering threat from their predecessor, unlike what transpired in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq.

"The best time to capture these defeated leaders is immediately after the conflict finishes," Ashdown said. "The longer it takes the more chance they have of being spirited away to a place which is much more difficult to find."

The United States and NATO are also deeply concerned about possible looting and resale of weapons from Libyan arsenals as Al Qathafi's rule crumbles, though the State Department said it believed Libya's stocks of concentrated uranium and mustard agent were secure.

With fighting raging in Tripoli, there was evidence of the kind of bitter bloodletting in recent days that the rebel leaders are anxious to stop in the interests of uniting Libyans, including former Al Qathafi supporters, in a democracy.

A Reuters correspondent counted 30 bodies, apparently of troops and gunmen who had fought for Al Qathafi, at a site in central Tripoli. At least two had their hands bound. One was strapped to a hospital trolley with a drip still in his arm.

All the bodies had been riddled with bullets.

Elsewhere, a British medical worker said she had counted 17 bodies who she believed were of prisoners executed by Al Qathafi's forces. One wounded man said he had survived the incident, when, he said, prison guards had sprayed inmates with gunfire on Tuesday as the rebel forces entered Al Qathafi's compound.

French magazine Paris Match quoted an intelligence source saying Libyan commandos found evidence that Al Qathafi had stayed at a safe house which they raided on Wednesday.

NATO was helping the rebels with intelligence and reconnaissance, Britain said, and its jets kept up their bombing campaign overnight.

"There are areas of resistance by the regime which has had considerable levels of military expertise, still has stockpiles of weapons and still has the ability for command and control," said British defence Minister Liam Fox.

"They may take some time to completely eliminate and it is likely there will be some frustrating days ahead before the Libyan people are completely free of the Al Qathafi legacy."

Nonetheless, many in Tripoli count themselves happy already that Al Qathafi has gone. "I was nine years old when Al Qathafi came to power and I've always hoped I wouldn't die before I saw this day," said Ali Salem al-Gharyani, choking back tears.

"I am now 50 years old and this is the first time, seeing Al Qathafi gone, that I have experienced true joy in my life.

(Al Arabiya) - The National Transitional Council will run Libya for a period of up to eight months before calling general elections, rebel leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil told France 24. During that time, a new constitution will be drafted.

The National Transitional Council intends to draw up a new constitution for the country and hold general elections after a period of ruling that should not exceed eight months, the head of the rebel council told France24 on Wednesday.

In a telephone interview, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council, outlined the councilÂ’s election plans.

"The election timetable will consist of two stages. In the first phase, the national council will act as a supreme council, but for no longer than eight months. The second stage will probably last a year, during which time the national council will draw up a new constitution, set up a provisional government and hold general elections, in line with the new presidential system," he said.

He also detailed the difficult conditions reigning in the Libyan capital Tripoli after three days of intense fighting between rebels and forces loyal to Muammar Al Qathafi, adding that the battle would not be over until the Libyan leader himself was a prisoner.

"According to our information, the number of those killed during the operation which has lasted three days is just over 400, with 2,000 wounded," he said, without specifying if he was talking of both sides.

"We captured up to 600 Al Qathafi soldiers," Abdul-Jalil added.

The rebel leader said he thought that Colonel Muammar Al Qathafi himself had fled Tripoli, saying he was not brave enough to stay and fight. "I think Al Qathafi is headed south, or south-west towards Algeria, but I don't think he could go east nor south because those areas are controlled by insurgents," he said late Tuesday.

Abdul-Jalil said the rebels were in full control of Al Qathafi's Bab al-Azizya compound, but there were still loyalists holding out in three areas of the capital, including Abu Slim.

He appealed for humanitarian aid, saying that the city's hospital lacked medical supplies and some of the wounded needed to be evacuated.

The Rebel National Council chief also said that "despite the violence the council would begin moving from its base in Benghazi to the capital with effect from Thursday."

Saying the country must not fall into chaos, he added, "I call on all rebels and citizens to show patience, forgiveness and tolerance and not give in to vengeance."

"I hope that he will be captured alive and tried so the world can know about his crimes," he added.

Libyan rebels announce to move government to Tripoli

(Xinhua) - Libyan rebels announced late Thursday to transfer their leadership from Benghazi to the capital Tripoli.

Doha-based TV channel Al-Jazeera quoted the announcement by a senior official of the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) at a press conference as saying that the NTC has transferred its executive committee's work to Tripoli.

The official said Tripoli will remain the capital of Libya, calling on the police to resume work and restore order in the city.

The official paid tribute to "the martyrs" in the rebels' fighting with forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Al Qathafi and expressed appreciation for the support offered by countries such as Britain and Qatar.

The NTC will not revenge on Al Qathafi loyalists, but must put Al Qathafi to justice, the official said.

The rebels entered the capital earlier this week and overran Al Qathafi's military compound Tuesday after a day of fierce fighting. They claimed that they have controlled 90 percent of Tripoli, but intense fighting was still going on in many parts of the city between the rebels and Al Qathafi's loyalists.

Libya contact group calls on Al Qathafi to surrender

The Libya contact group called on the embattled Libyan leader Muammar Al Qathafi and his inner circle to surrender at the conclusion of its meeting in Istanbul on Thursday.

The Libya contact group meeting at the level of political directors stressed the need for Al Qathafi and his inner circle to turn themselves in to justice in order to prevent further bloodshed and the destruction of national infrastructure.

Defected Libyan ex-PM says ready to create new party

Defected Libyan ex-prime minister Abdessalam Abdul Jalloud said here at a press conference on Thursday that he was ready to found a new political party.

Once one of Al Qathafi's most closed allies, Jalloud escaped to Rome with his family on Sunday and has now passed over to the rebels' side, ready to take part in the transition phase in Libya and resuscitate himself in politics.

Al Qathafi calls on supporters to 'purify' Tripoli of rebels

(Irish Times) - Libyan leader Muammar Al Qathafi called on his supporters today to march on Tripoli and "purify" the capital of rebels, who he denounced as "rats, crusaders and unbelievers".

In a short audio speech broadcast on loyalist TV channels, Col Al Qathafi called on all Libya's tribes to rally and expel what he called foreign agents from the country.

"Libya is for the Libyan people and not for the agents, not for imperialism, not for France, not for Sarkozy, not for Italy," he said. "Tripoli is for you, not for those who rely on NATO".

Separately, Col Al Qathafi's onetime right-hand man Abdul Salam Jalloud said tonight he planned to form a secular political party with an eye towards future elections in Libya.

Rebels today stormed Tripoli's Abu Salim district, one of the main holdouts of forces loyal to Col Al Qathafi in the capital, after NATO airstrikes on a building in the area, a Reuters correspondent said.

Thousands of fighters were sweeping through houses and side streets to flush out snipers and were emerging with dozens of prisoners, the correspondent said, adding that gunfights were ongoing.

Local residents, some with children, were in cars trying to get out of the area, a poor neighbourhood where support for Col Al Qathafi has traditionally been strong, as the rebels poured in.

Rebels drove two pickup trucks with captured pro-Al Qathafi forces in the back away from the scene.

There were two air strikes, apparently targeting a fire station. The building was wrecked.

Reuters journalists who moved in after the strike saw two bodies and one seriously wounded man. On the floor of the fire station was a NATO bomb which had failed to explode.

Many buildings were on fire. The pro-Al Qathafi forces appeared to have no heavy weapons, just snipers in buildings.

The rebels said they were confident they could mop up soldiers clinging to a leader now on the run and presumed to be in hiding in the country he ruled for four decades.

"The end will only come when he's captured, dead or alive," said Mustafa Abdul Jalil, head of the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC), who offered amnesty to any of Col Al Qathafi's entourage who killed him and announced a reward worth more than $1 million for his capture.

The US, however, distanced itself from efforts to hunt down Col Al Qathafi, saying neither US assets nor NATO forces were targeting him.

Comments by Pentagon and State Department officials highlighted Washington's sensitivity toward any perceived shift in NATO's military mission in Libya toward direct involvement in in regime change.

NATO's mission, as authorised by the UN, is to protect Libyan civilians - not to remove Col Al Qathafi, even as he becomes the focus of the apparent final chapter in the rebel overthrow of his regime.

"Neither the United States nor NATO is involved in this manhunt," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

At the Pentagon, spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said: "I'm not speaking for any other national authorities - whether any of our partner nations might be doing something. But NATO itself, and the US as part of it, are not."

Britain's defence minister Liam Fox said earlier that NATO was aiding efforts by rebels to find Col Al Qathafi, as they seek to stifle any counter-attack by his family or other loyalists.

After rebel forces overran Col Al Qathafi's fortified Tripoli compound and trashed symbols of his 42-year rule, scattered loyalist fighters and snipers fought last-ditch battles in pockets across the city. Rebels also reported fighting deep in the desert and a standoff around Col Al Qathafi's home town.

"There are still many snipers in eastern Tripoli," said one rebel fighter. "We'll finish them off, but it'll take time."

In a clearing by the seafront in Tripoli, at least 100 rebel trucks mounted with machine-guns were parked, their crews checking their weapons in preparation for an assault on Al Qathafi hold-outs in the leader's huge Tripoli stronghold overrun by rebels at the weekend.

"Al Qathafi is finished," said one fighter, who had driven into Tripoli from the rebel city of Misurata.

There was no clear indication of Col Al Qathafi's whereabouts, though his opponents surmised he was still in or around Tripoli after what Al Qathafi himself described as a "tactical" withdrawal from his Bab al-Azziziyah compound before it fell on Tuesday.

French magazine Paris Match quoted an intelligence source saying Libyan commandos found evidence that he had stayed at a safe house which they raided yesterday. NATO was helping the rebels with intelligence and reconnaissance, Britain said, and its jets kept up their bombing campaign overnight.

"There are areas of resistance by the regime which has had considerable levels of military expertise, still has stockpiles of weapons and still has the ability for command and control," British defence minister Liam Fox told Sky News.

"They may take some time to completely eliminate and it is likely there will be some frustrating days ahead before the Libyan people are completely free of the Al Qathafi legacy."

Aymen, a rebel at the Maitiga airbase in Tripoli, said rebels were trying to fight their way into the Abu Slim area, not far from Col Al Qathafi's Bab al-Azziziyah complex.

"They are surrounding it but Al Qathafi loyalists are putting up a fight, firing from inside. We continue to comb for supporters of the fallen regime," he said by phone.

Nouri Echtiwi, a rebel spokesman in Tripoli, said rebels had released several hundred detainees from a prison in Abu Slim. The figure not be immediately verified.

Col Al Qathafi's home town of Sirte, on the coast between Tripoli and Benghazi, was still not in the hands of the new leadership who have despatched forces there.

"Talks have been ongoing for two days now between NTC and tribal leaders from Sirte to liberate the city and ensure its inhabitants lay down arms and allow access to administrative buildings," Mr Echtiwi said.

Rebels also reported fighting in the southern city of Sabha.

But medical supplies, never especially plentiful, were reaching critical levels in many places where some of the hundreds of casualties from the fighting were being treated. Shooting in the street also kept medics away from work.

"The hospitals that I've been to have been full of wounded - gunshot wounded," said Jonathan Whittall, head of the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) mission to Libya.

"In one health facility that I visited, they had converted some houses next to the clinic into an inpatient department ... But because of the shortage of staff, there was no nursing staff and the patients were essentially caring for themselves."

A British medical worker said one Tripoli hospital had received 17 bodies which appeared to be of civilians executed in recent days by government forces in Col Al Qathafi's compound.

Meanwhile Libya's new masters are keen to forge ahead and secure the funds they need to bring relief to war-battered towns and rebuild the oil sector on which the economy depends. NTC diplomats meet their Western backers in Turkey today.

Western leaders and the rebel government-in-waiting have lost no time readying a handover of Libya's substantial foreign assets.

After talks with Arab and Western allies in Qatar yesterday, a senior rebel leader said the NTC would seek to have $5 billion in frozen assets released to jump-start the economy and provide vital relief to its citizens. The amount is double the previously given estimate of $2.5 billion.

The United States has also submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council to unfreeze $1.5 billion in Libyan assets. No vote was held on the draft yesterday, but diplomats said a vote could come on today or tomorrow.

While Libya is rich in oil, four decades of rule by personality cult has left it with few normal institutions.

After meeting rebel government chief Mahmoud Jibril in Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who took a lead in pushing for NATO military intervention, said Paris would host a "Friends of Libya" summit on September 1st.

It would include Russia and China, both critics of the Western bombing campaign, who have been concerned at now losing out on business deals with the rebels. Rebels want to bring back workers to restart oil export facilities soon.

The rebels, many of whom were once supporters of Col Al Qathafi, have stressed the wish to work with former loyalists and officials and to avoid the purges of the ousted ruling elite which marked Iraq's descent into sectarian anarchy after 2003.

Their gains are however no guarantee of security or progress with Col Al Qathafi and his entourage at large. Abdul Salam Jalloud, a close ally who switched sides last week, said Al Qathafi planned to slip away and launch a guerrilla war: "He is sick with power," he said. "He believes he can gather his supporters and carry out attacks ... He is delusional. He thinks he can return to power."

There were signs of more supporters giving up on him, following a stream of defections during the six months of the uprising.

The second in command of Libya's intelligence services and the health minister declared their allegiance to rebel forces.

After by far the bloodiest of the Arab Spring revolts that are transforming the Middle East and North Africa, there were clear indications of new threats of disorder. Four Italian journalists have been kidnapped near Zawiyah, between Tripoli and the Tunisian border.

Western officials also fear anti-aircraft missiles and nuclear material capable of making a "dirty bomb", could be taken from Col Al Qathafi's stocks and reach hostile groups.

Imposing order and preventing rivalries breaking out across tribal, ethnic and ideological lines among the disparate rebel factions are major concerns of both the new leaders and of their Western backers, who are working to avoid the anarchy and bloodshed that followed the overthrow of Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

(The Daily Star-Bangladesh) - Editorial: Despite the last-ditch stand by his loyalists in parts of Tripoli and in his home region of Sirte, Muammar Al Qathafi's hold on Libya has effectively come to an end. No tears for the man, who consistently entrenched himself in power and indulged in self-glorification.

In control of Libya since he, as a young colonel, overthrew the monarchy in September 1969, Al Qathafi made little effort to transform his country into a democracy and at no point showed any desire to pass the torch to a successor.

His obsession, especially in the past decade, has been to promote his children to take over from him. Besides, his eccentricities have always embarrassed his fellow Libyans.

It is thus natural that the Al Qathafi era is over. Having said that, though, we cannot but be concerned that his end was brought about through the intervention of NATO, whose firepower pounded his forces and assisted the rebels day after day. Without NATO, the rebels would not be where they are today.

Any move, subtle or overt, to influence or coerce the National Transitional Council into adopting policies the west can be comfortable with can only have bad repercussions around the globe. Al Qathafi has gone. Now Libya's people must shape the future in their own enlightened interest. Let them do it freely, without foreign patronisation or interference.

(Daily Sun-Bangladesh) - The Libyan leader, Muammar Al Qathafi is finally going, in disgrace.

The fact is that he should have gone months earlier in which case it would be less disgraceful and much civilian casualties could have been spared. According to latest reports, Muammar Al Qathafi has turned a fugitive, the rebels of the National Transitional Council (NTC) have taken control of Libya.'

Libyans are celebrating what they perceive as deliverance from the stranglehold of a dictator.

His long rule which had been an amalgam of mild socialism and mild fundamentalism, has all but ended. But problems have not ended, especially since Libya is rich in oil resource and massive foreign military aid was involved in the government's ouster. Hopefully it will not be a replay of post-2003 Iraq.

The fate of Al Qathafi and Hosni Mubarak underscores the fact that a stretch of long and interminable incumbency does not quite amount to real stability and any stability seen is specious, skin-deep. When opposition lacks any built-in safety valve to vent itself, it is apt to explode - at its own time.

The people of Libya, like those of Iraq, are divided on ethnic lines and may have conflicting interests. Unlike in the Iraq war, this time there is no hush hush over the fact that foreigners' interest is mainly oil. (Libya is distant from Israel and hence its geopolitical importance is not great).

The NTC is explicit that in future oil deals it will favour countries that supported the rebellion.

If that is the criterion then it can be said that France whose zeal in backing he rebels was boundless, has stolen a march over the US. It will also mean that the NTC will have to live for sometime under the shadow of Chinese and Russian antagonism.

It is hoped that Libyans would live up to the coming challenges and it should be noted that during the ongoing conflicts the rebel leaders showed some wisdom which prevented the scene from getting bloodier.

Al Qathafi's rule is ending in a whimper but it had begun with a bang back in 1969. The young colonel was then widely acclaimed for deposing an effete kingship. He was seen as a combative force against imperialist designs.

Within months of his assumption of office USA's Wheelus airbase was ordered closed. His support for the Palestinian cause was total.

Unfortunately Al Qathafi could not distinguish between revolutionary cause and terrorist cause and a time came when Libya was seen as the hub of international terrorism, like today's Pakistan. The Lockerbie incident only laid it bare.

Besides its oil, Libya has another powerful resource: high proportions of educated citizens. Like Iraqis, Egyptians and of course the Palestinians, the people of Libya are education-minded.

Source: http://tripolipost.com