Libyan government aide holds talks in Britain
Original Source: http://www.suntimes.com
Author: David Stringer
Original Publication Date: April 2, 2011
Libyan women protesters carry the effigy of Moammar Gadhafi as they shout slogans during a demonstration in Benghazi, Libya, Thursday, March 31, 2011 (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
A key Libyan official involved in negotiations on the future of Moammar Gadhafi’s regime said Friday that Tripoli was attempting to hold talks with the U.S., Britain and France to find a mutual end to the crisis.
Abdul-Ati al-Obeidi, a former Libyan prime minister, said Gadhafi’s government was reaching out to those leading the international military campaign in an attempt to halt air strikes against regime targets which began March 19. The claim follows confirmation that a Libyan government aide has held talks in Britain with U.K. officials in recent days.
“We are trying to talk to the British, the French and the Americans to stop the killing of people. We are trying to find a mutual solution,” al-Obeidi told Britain’s Channel 4 News, speaking in Tripoli.
Meanwhile, rebel leaders pressed for a cease-fire on the condition that troops loyal to Gadhafi be pulled from contested cities.
Despite losing ground in the last few days, largely due to a lack of U.N. air support because of weather, outside military observers claim the rebel forces are beginning to become more organized. The rebels were also moving Friday to generate sales of oil from captured production facilities.
Al-Obeidi was involved last month in Gadhafi-sanctioned negotiations with the African Union.
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman, Steve Field, said the U.K. has been in contact with a number of Libyan officials over recent weeks, though he declined to give specific details.
“We are sending them all one very clear message, which is that Gadhafi must go,” he told reporters.
Mohammed Ismail, a senior aide to Gadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, has met with and also spoken by phone to British officials, who repeated to him their public calls for the Libyan leader to step down.
Two people familiar with the matter, who both demanded anonymity to discuss details, said Ismail had been in Britain to visit relatives, and that, when officials became aware of this, they took the opportunity to hold talks.
Field insisted that Britain had not been involved in negotiating any possible trade-offs aimed at sealing Gadhafi’s exit from power. “There are no deals,” he said.
At an undisclosed location, thought to be in southern England, officials continued Friday to debrief Libya’s ex-foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, who fled Tripoli and flew to England on Wednesday.
Koussa, 62, is the highest ranking member of Gadhafi’s regime to quit so far and had been a longtime aide throughout the tyrant’s 42-year rule.
David Solomont, the U.S. ambassador in Spain, said Gadhafi supporters appeared to be losing confidence in the likelihood he will cling to power. “I think he is becoming increasingly more isolated in his own country,” Solomont told reporters in Madrid on Friday.
A second senior Libyan official, Ali Abdessalam Treki — Libya’s former envoy to the U.N. and also a former foreign minister — announced that he had quit Thursday.
But in a telephone interview Friday with Libyan state TV, the country’s current intelligence chief, Bouzeid Dorda, denied Treki had defected.
Scottish prosecutors are planning to interview Koussa over the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people — most of them Americans. Libya acknowledged responsibility for the terrorist attack in 2003, and authorities in Scotland believe Koussa may hold vital information on who ordered to plot.
Six Libyans, including a brother-in-law of Gadhafi, were convicted in absentia for their roles in the bombing, and Libya agreed to pay $170 million in compensation, though stopped short of acknowledging responsibility.
