Monday, February 21, 2011

The son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi threatened early Monday civil war if protests continue in an ultimatum to Libyans: either accept a comprehensive reform plan or brace for far more bloodshed.
Appearing on state television, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi offered to put forward reforms within days that he described as a “historic national initiative.”

He said the regime was willing to remove some restrictions and to begin a discussion of the constitution. He offered to change a number of laws, including those covering the media.

“We will take up arms … we will fight to the last bullet,” he said, warning that tens of thousands of Libyans were flocking to Tripoli to defend Gadhafi and Libya. “We will destroy seditious elements. If everybody is armed, it is civil war, we will kill each other.”

Warning that the country was “at a crossroads,” he said the Libyan people must choose between reform and bloodshed. “I address you for the last time before we obtain arms and [give out weapons] if necessary. Tomorrow we will launch a historic and national initiative … the ratification of a set of laws, including media, civil society and a new penal code.”

Otherwise, “we will obtain weapons … five million Libyans will obtain weapons,” he warned.
He called for a new Libya with a new national anthem and a new flag, as well as decentralization in managing the affairs of the country.

He said his father was still in the country and backed by the army, despite earlier media reports saying Moammar Gadhafi fled.
Gadhafi’s son blamed foreign media of inflating the death toll and branded the unprecedented protests against his father’s rule a foreign plot. Accusing wealthy businessmen and tradesmen of hiring Arab and African expats to cause violence, he said the violence was aimed at installing Islamist rule.

Unrest spread to the capital Sunday after security forces shot dead at least 60 protesters and wounded 200 others in Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi, where residents said a military unit had joined their cause. In the first sign of serious unrest in Tripoli, thousands of protesters clashed with supporters of Gadhafi. Gunfire could be heard and police using tear gas to disperse the demonstrators.

According to residents reached by telephone in Benghazi, off limits to foreign journalists, tens – perhaps hundreds – of thousands of protesters took to the streets and appeared to be in control of the city before security forces opened fire.

Human Rights Watch, citing sources at two hospitals in Benghazi, said 60 people were killed Sunday in Benghazi, raising the death toll from four days of fighting between protesters and security forces to at least 233.
Habib al-Obaidi, who heads the intensive care unit at the main Al-Jalae hospital, said members of a unit known as the “Thunderbolt” squad had come to the hospital carrying wounded comrades. The soldiers said they had defected to the cause of the protesters and had fought and defeated Gadhafi’s elite guards.

“They are now saying that they have overpowered the Praetorian Guard and that they have joined the people’s revolt,” another man at the hospital who heard the soldiers, lawyer Mohammad al-Mana, told Reuters by telephone.

Sunday’s violence took place after residents took to the streets in their thousands to bury scores of dead killed in the previous 24 hours.
In a rare sign of dissent, Libya’s representative to the Arab League quit in protest over “oppression against protesters,” Al-Jazeera television reported.

A leading tribal figure who requested anonymity said security forces, mainly confined to a compound, had been venturing out of their barracks and shooting protesters in the street in “cat and mouse chases.”
Piecemeal accounts suggested the streets of Benghazi, about 1,000 kilometers east of the capital Tripoli, were largely controlled by anti-government protesters, under periodic attack from security forces who fired from their high-walled compound.

In the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, the opposition said Sunday it wants the nation’s rulers to guarantee they will back up their conciliatory words with actions. Unrest also hit Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, Oman, Kuwait, Algeria and Djibouti over the weekend as people took to the streets demanding political and economic change.
Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa made conciliatory noises after the violence in which six people died. “All political parties in the country deserve a voice at the table,” he told CNN. “I think there is a lot of anger, a lot of sadness … We are terribly sorry and this is a terrible tragedy for our nation,” said the prince.
Opposition leaders appeared to be in no hurry to talk.

Ibrahim Mattar, a lawmaker of the main opposition Wefaq party, said that they wanted the crown prince to show signs of addressing their demands before any formal dialogue could start. “We are waiting for an initiative from him, with a scope for dialogue,” he said, adding that the prince should “send a small signal he is willing to have a constitutional monarchy.”

In Tunisia Sunday, security forces fired into the air as tens of thousands of protesters gathered downtown to call for the replacement of the interim government.

In Yemen, hundreds of students demonstrated Sunday in Sanaa, while police shot dead a protester in south Yemen. Thousands of people also staged sit-ins in other cities, demanding the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who renewed his call for the opposition to pursue a dialogue.

But the coalition of main opposition parties said there could be no dialogue with “bullets and sticks and thuggery”, or with a government “which gathers mercenaries to occupy public squares … and terrorize people.”
At least 2,000 protesters gathered in a square in Morocco’s capital Sunday to demand that King Mohammad VI give up some of his powers and clamp down on government corruption. The protests were largely peaceful though there were reports of some minor unrest after they ended.

In Kuwait, Parliament Speaker Jassem al-Kharafi appealed Sunday for an end to three days of protests by the descendants of desert nomads demanding citizenship and the generous state benefits that go with it. – Agencies