Muammar Gaddafi urged his supporters from hiding to fight on
as Libya's new interim rulers met world leaders on Thursday to discuss
reshaping a nation torn by 42 years of one-man rule and six months of civil
war.
"Let it be a long battle.
We will fight from place to place, from town to town, from valley to valley,
from mountain to mountain," Gaddafi said in a message relayed by satellite
TV on the anniversary of the coup that brought him to power in 1969.
"If Libya goes up in
flames, who will be able to govern it? Let it burn," he said with his
trademark verbal flamboyance.
In further comments broadcast
later, he vowed to prevent oil exports, in the kind of threat that stirs fears
of an Iraq-style insurgency: "You will not be able to pump oil for the
sake of your own people. We will not allow this to happen," Gaddafi said.
"Be ready for a war of gangs and urban warfare."
Amid conflicting reports of
where the 69-year-old fugitive might be, a commander in the forces of the new
ruling council said he had fled to a desert town south of the capital, one of
several tribal bastions still holding out.
Seeking to avoid more
bloodshed, opposition forces also extended by a week a deadline for Gaddafi's
hometown of Sirte, on the coast, to surrender.
Meeting the National
Transitional Council in Paris at the invitation ofFrance and
Britain, prime backers of the Libyan uprising which followed other Arab Spring
revolts, Western powers said Gaddafi was still a threat, but handed the NTC $15
billion of his foreign assets to start the job of rebuilding.
"The world bet on the
Libyans and the Libyans showed their courage and made their dream real,"
Mahmoud Jibril, the prime minister in the interim government, said as NATO air
forces maintained support for NTC fighters on the frontlines in Libya.
CLINTON: "WE WILL BE
WATCHING"
A history of tribal, ethnic
and regional friction as well as divisions during the rebellion have created a
wariness among Libyans and abroad about the ability of the new leaders to
introduce the stable democracy that is the declared goal for the potentially
oil-rich nation of six million.
Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton said in Paris: "The work does not end with the end of an
oppressive regime. Winning a war offers no guarantee of winning the peace that
follows."
"We will be watching and
supporting Libya's leaders as they keep their stated commitments to conduct an
inclusive transition, act under the rule of law and protect vulnerable
populations," she added, pledging to continue military support and calling
on Gaddafi and his entourage to give themselves up.
Clinton also urged the new
leaders to work with those who once supported Gaddafi -- something the prime
minister in the ousted government, al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi, said he was
also doing, according to a report by al-Arabiya television.
Other powers, notably Russia
and China, have been slower to warm to
Gaddafi's enemies but attended the Paris conference as international
competition warms up for a share of contracts in rebuilding Libya and in
exploiting its big oil and gas reserves.
Russia recognized
the NTC as Libya's government on Thursday.
Given sensitivities among
Arabs and Muslims after Western campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan,
British Prime Minister David Cameron was at pains to stress that Libyans were
in charge of their own fate.
"This is not being
dropped out of a NATO aeroplane, this is being delivered by the Libyan
people," he said. "It is their revolution, it is their change."
"GADDAFI IN BANI
WALID"
Abdel Majid Mlegta,
coordinator of the Tripoli military operations room for the NTC, told Reuters
"someone we trust" had said Gaddafi fled to Bani Walid, 150 km (95
miles) southeast of the capital, three days after Tripoli fell. With him were
his son Saif al-Islam and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, all three of
them facing international war crimes charges.
An Algerian newspaper said
Gaddafi was in the border town of Ghadamis and phoned Algerian President
Abdelaziz Bouteflika to appeal for refuge. Bouteflika did not take the call,
though Algeria has taken in Gaddafi's wife and three of his children.
Mlegta said Gaddafi was
planning a fightback from Bani Walid but that appeals to notables in the town
to hand over Gaddafi had gone unanswered. He ruled out attacking the town
because of tribal ties shared by its residents and many NTC fighters.
Independent reports from Sirte
and Bani Walid have not been available with communications cut. NTC commanders
say residents are running low on supplies but many remain loyal to Gaddafi.
Mohammed Zawawi, an NTC
spokesman in the eastern city of Benghazi, said extending a deadline for
surrender until next Saturday would save lives.
"We're not in a rush to
get in to Sirte," he said. "We're not going to lose casualties for
it."
In the desert east of Bani
Walid, a Reuters correspondent saw columns of anti-Gaddafi forces on patrol but
found fighters unready to mount an offensive yet.
"Right now we are
waiting. Everyone is ready to fight. Sirte will be liberated first, then Bani
Walid," said fighter Ibrahim Obaidr.
TRIPOLI SHORT OF WATER
In Tripoli, two million
residents are starting to see new supplies of food, and fuel supplies are
adequate but there is no end in sight to a water shortage caused in part by
pro-Gaddafi forces being in control of facilities inland, EU officials said.
For many of its inhabitants,
it was the first September 1 they could remember when they had not been forced
to celebrate the 1969 coup against King Idris which put a 27-year-old army
captain called Muammar Gaddafi in charge of their lives.
At Tripoli's Green Square,
once the stage for his parades and now renamed Martyrs Square, there no crowds,
only casual passers-by and men gathering spent bullet casings for scrap.
Many hope for better under
the new leadership, but remain bitter about the past. Riding through the square
on his bicycle, teacher Mohammed Ali lamented Libya's recent history:
"People reached the moon in 1969, and we got Gaddafi."
(Additional reporting by
Mohammed Abbas and Christian Lowe in Tripoli, Maria Golovnina in Misrata, Emma Farge, Robert Birsel and Alex Dziadosz in Benghazi, Richard Valdmanis, Marie-Louise Gumuchian, Giles Elgood and Alastair Macdonald in Tunis, Justyna Pawlak in Brussels,Catherine Bremer, Brian Love, John Irish and Keith Weir in Paris; Writing by Alistair Lyon and Alastair Macdonald)
Source : Reuters
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