Monday, February 28, 2011

Rebels in eastern Libya, who have seized control of the region from Moammar Gadhafi, said Sunday they had formed a national council to act as the face of the revolution but said it was not an interim government.
Hafiz Ghoga, the spokesman for the new National Libyan Council formed after a meeting of Gadhafi opponents in the eastern city of Benghazi, also said he saw no room for talks with the Libyan leader who has lost control of large swathes of the country.

“The main aim of the national council is to have a political face … for the revolution,” Ghoga told a news conference after the gathering. “We cannot call it a transition government. It is a national council,” he said, adding that consultations were under way to discuss the composition and duties of the new body.
“The council is not completely formed yet,” he said.

The online edition of the Libya’s Quryna newspaper said Saturday former Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil had led the formation of an interim government based in Benghazi.
Abdel-Jalil said the new administration would include commanders of the regular army, much of which have defected, and would pave the way for elections in three months’ time.

“Our national government has military and civilian personalities. It will lead for no more than three months, and then there will be fair elections and the people will choose their leader,” he said.
Libya’s envoy to the United States supported Abdel-Jalil’s move.
“We want to support this … caretaker government until the liberation of all of Libya, which I hope will happen very soon,” said Libyan Ambassador Ali Aujali, who this week broke with Gadhafi, told Reuters.

Libya’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Ibrahim Dabbashi, also said Saturday that his delegation supported “in principle” Abdel-Jalil’s caretaker government.
Ghoga described Abdel-Jalil’s initiative as his “personal view.”

Ghoga refused to disclose the names of the members of the council.

Fathi Baja, a member of the city council, said Sunday that Abdel-Jalil was chosen to the provisional leadership post by the committees running the eastern Libyan cities now in the rebellion’s hands. The spokesman also dismissed talk of negotiating with Gadhafi. “In my view … there is no room for negotiation,” he said.
“It is premature to talk about elections. We still have a capital under siege,” he said, adding that membership of the national council and workings were still being drawn up.
Tripoli is still in Gadhafi’s hands.

He insisted that the council was seeking to keep the country united.
“There is no such thing as a divided Libya,” he said.
The anti-regime protesters were “counting on the army to liberate Tripoli,” said Ghoga. But “the people of Libya will liberate their [other] cities.”

“We are in touch with all the liberated cities in order to form the council.”
He also said that the leaders did not want any foreign intervention in the country and said they had not made contact with foreign governments.

Meanwhile, two senior U.S. lawmakers urged Washington to recognize a transitional government in Libya and provide it with weapons and humanitarian aid to oust Gadhafi.

Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman were speaking from Egypt, where a popular uprising swept President Hosni Mubarak from power earlier this month after three decades of rule.

“We ought to recognize the provisional government as the legitimate government of Libya and we ought to give that government certainly humanitarian assistance and military arms, not to go in on the ground ourselves but to give them the wherewithal to fight on behalf of the people of Libya against a cruel dictator,” Lieberman told CNN from Cairo. – Agencies