FACED with unrelenting opposition at home and abroad, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has apparently reconsidered his bid to hold on to power.

To ensure his safe exit, Gaddafi’s associates have opened negotiation with the United States(U.S.) and other countries.  U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters after an international conference on Libya in the United Arab Emirates that proposals from “people close to Gaddafi” presented to unspecified countries included the “potential for a transition.”

But she said she could not predict if they would be accepted. She did, however, stress that she believed Gaddafi’s decades-long rule is nearing an end.

Her comments came in response to a question about whether she could confirm that Gaddafi’s loyalists were seeking a way for him to go into exile in an African country.

Meanwhile, major powers in NATO and other organisations met yesterday to plot out what U.S. officials called a democratic “post-Gaddafi Libya” as the rebels warned the talks would be a failure if they secured no concrete financial support.

According to Agence France Presse (AFP), Clinton and counterparts from NATO and other countries participating in air strikes against Gaddafi’s regime held their third round of Libya talks yesterday in the United Arab Emirates capital, Abu Dhabi.

However, Gaddafi’s government has denied accusations that Libyan government forces committed crimes against humanity and war crimes.

A Libyan diplomat, Mustafa Shaban, said yesterday that  the government was “the victim of a widespread aggression” and blamed the news media, opposition and African and foreign mercenaries for human rights violations and even “acts of cannibalism.”

Shaban told the Geneva-based United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council that Gaddafi’s government would turn over evidence it has obtained.

The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court said on Wednesday  that  he was investigating whether Gadhafi provided viagra to Libyan soldiers to promote rape.

And a UN panel said last week its investigators found evidence that government forces committed murder, torture and sexual abuses.

Again, NATO air strikes rattled the Libyan capital yesterday with eight clusters of bombing runs believed to have targeted the outskirts of Tripoli.

The intensity of the attacks suggested a return to the heavy NATO bombardment of the city on Tuesday that hit military installations across the capital and flattened major buildings in leader Gaddafi’s sprawling compound in the centre of the city. Government officials did not say what had been targeted in yesterday bombing runs.

The Minister of Oil and Finance in the Libyan rebel council, Ali Tarhoni, said the rebels would start producing 100,000 barrels of oil per day “soon” from eastern fields under their control.

But while such output will one day bring in more revenue, he said he hoped the third meeting of the International Contact Group” will establish a financial mechanism” to help the rebels’ National Transitional Council (NTC), according to AFP.

However, news came late yesterday that stakeholders at the meeting have approved some financial lifeline for the rebels.

Tarhoni had said he hoped that at very least, West governments would extend loans to the opposition secured on the billions of dollars of assets of the Gaddafi regime frozen abroad.

The opposition has complained that it had seen nothing concrete since the group last met on May 5 in Rome when the powers agreed to set up a fund to aid the rebels and promised to tap frozen assets of Gaddafi’s regime.

“We understand the (NTC’s) frustration but again the international community isn’t going to let the (NTC) go under financially,” a U.S. official said on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The contact group was to debate a “mechanism” through which aid “can flow in a transparent and accountable manner,” the official said.

U.S. officials said the United States would urge Arab countries to offer more funds to the rebel administration based in Libya’s second city of Benghazi.

Two dozen countries, including key NATO allies Britain, France and Italy, as well as delegates from the UN, the Arab League, and the Organisation of Islamic Conference are attending the talks.

Libya, a key crude-exporting nation that was producing some 1.7 million barrels a day (bpd) before the rebellion broke out in mid-February, has seen its output slashed since the revolt began.

According to the International Energy Agency, Libya’s exports averaged 1.49 million bpd before the uprising, with 85 per cent of that going to Europe.

A small number of export shipments have been made from rebel-held territory, delivered to market through Qatar Petroleum in an exemption to the sanctions.

But rebels said last month they had no immediate plans to resume significant oil exports as their priority was to ensure oil installations were made secure.

The talks in Abu Dhabi come after President Barack Obama said NATO’s bombing mission in Libya, launched in March, was forging “inexorable” advances that meant it was only a matter of time before Gaddafi quits power.

As the military, political and economic pressure mounts on Gaddafi’s four-decade grip on power, the contact group will discuss “what a post-Gaddafi Libya ought to look like,” a senior U.S. official said.

Such a place should be a “unified state, (a) democratic state with a smooth transition,” the official said before Clinton arrived for the talks.

A second official said the NTC had set up shadow ministries in Benghazi and named a civilian to head the military in readiness for Gaddafi’s eventual departure.

The international community has begun to talk among themselves and with the rebel administration about how to offer security and basic services to the people of Tripoli when the Libyan capital is freed, he said.

However, the official added that Washington cannot say whether the NTC “is ready to assume complete control.”

He also cautioned that there is no international consensus over when Gaddafi should leave power, where he should go, or even whether he should leave Libya.

The talks among the powers came after loud explosions rocked the Libyan capital near Gaddafi’s compound for another straight night, AFP said.

The Western alliance said it carried out 47 strike sorties on Wednesday, hitting a vehicle storage facility in Tripoli and a missile storage facility, a missile site, a command and control facility, a tank, and four armoured fighting vehicles just outside.

NATO said it also hit an electronic warfare vehicle and a military training camp near Libya’s third-largest city Misrata.

The Mediterranean coastal city is the most significant rebel-held enclave in western Libya and a rebel spokesman said up to 3,000 Gaddafi troops attacked it in a three-pronged movement from the south, west and east on Wednesday.

Twelve people were killed and 33 wounded in the fighting in which Gaddafi’s forces deployed gunships, tanks and Grad rocket launchers as well as mortars, the spokesman, Hassan al-Galai, told AFP by telephone from the city.

-Guardian

Posted by admin on Jun 9 2011. Filed under Africa & World Politics, Headlines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry