FROM Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, came an assertion yesterday that the Libyan leader is willing to hold elections and would step aside if he lost, agency report stated.

The offer was made as Mikhail Margelov, the envoy leading Russia’s efforts to end the conflict, arrived in Tripoli for talks with Gaddafi’s government. The Kremlin has said it is ready to help negotiate the Libyan leader’s departure.

Also, the Libyan regime is in direct talks with the rebels, the Russian envoy was told yesterday as the strongman’s son said the way out of a months-long conflict is the staging of elections.

Margelov, in Tripoli for one day after visiting the rebels in their Benghazi stronghold last week, made the remarks after meeting Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi al-Mahmudi.

“I was assured at today’s negotiations that direct contacts between Benghazi and Tripoli are already underway,” Margelov said, quoted by Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency.

“The Libyan prime minister told me that a round of such contacts concluded yesterday in Paris,” he said, adding that French President Nicolas “Sarkozy has been informed of the outcome of these contacts.”

However, indications have shown that the offer of election is unlikely to placate Gaddafi’s opponents, but could test the unity of the Western alliance trying to force him out, according to Reuters.

Saif al-Islam proposal, which follows a series of concessions offered by the Libyan leader that Western powers have dismissed as ploys, comes at a time when frustration is mounting in some NATO states at the progress of the military campaign.

Four months into Libya’s conflict, rebel advances toward Tripoli are slow at best, while weeks of NATO air strikes pounding Gaddafi’s compound and other targets have failed to end his 41-year-old rule over the oil-producing country.

“They (elections) could be held within three months. At the maximum by the end of the year, and the guarantee of transparency could be the presence of international observers,” Saif al-Islam told Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera.

He said his father, who came to power in the same year that man first set foot on the moon, would be ready to step aside if he lost the election but would not go into exile.

“I have no doubt that the overwhelming majority of Libyans stand with my father and see the rebels as fanatical Islamist fundamentalists, terrorists stirred up from abroad,” the newspaper quoted Saif al-Islam as saying.

Libyan officials took the Russian envoy, and foreign reporters, to a cafe in the centre of Tripoli which they said had been destroyed in a NATO air strike overnight.

“There is no justification for this attack,” Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim told reporters, standing near the cafe. The building was a wreck of twisted metal and debris, and the dust from pulverized concrete coated the street.

Asked about the NATO bombing campaign, Kaim said: “It is not working and it will not work.” Margelov did not comment.

-Guardian

Posted by admin on Jun 17 2011. Filed under Africa & World Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry