By Peter Graff

Reuters 
 

TRIPOLI: Gadhafi is emphatic he will not leave Libya, South African President Jacob Zuma said Tuesday after talks with the Libyan leader that left prospects for a negotiated end to the conflict looking dim.
But new questions emerged over how long Gadhafi could hold on after a senior U.N. aid official said shortages of food and medicine in areas of Libya controlled by Gadhafi amounted to a “time bomb.”

Within hours of Zuma’s departure from Tripoli late Monday, Libyan television reported that NATO aircraft had resumed attacks, striking what it called civilian and military sites in Tripoli and Tajoura, just east of the capital.
Zuma was in Tripoli to try to revive an African “road map” for ending the conflict, which started in February with an uprising against Gadhafi and has since turned into a war with thousands of people killed.
The talks produced no breakthrough, with Gadhafi’s refusal to quit – a condition the rebels and NATO have set as a pre-condition for any cease-fire – still the sticking point.

“Col. Gadhafi called for an end to the bombings to enable a Libyan dialogue,” Zuma’s office said in a statement. “He emphasized that he was not prepared to leave his country, despite the difficulties.”
Speaking in the main rebel stronghold of Benghazi where he was opening a consulate, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said he had pledged an aid package for the rebels worth hundreds of millions of euros.
“I think the Gadhafi regime is over and I firmly believe that it is over for a simple reason: we are talking about a person whose closest friends are defecting. He lost his legitimacy in Libya,” Frattini said.

Now in its fourth month, Libya’s conflict is deadlocked on the ground, with anti-Gadhafi rebels unable to break out of their strongholds and advance toward Tripoli, where Gadhafi appears to be firmly entrenched.
Rebels control the east of Libya around the city of Benghazi, Libya’s third-biggest city Misrata, and a mountain range stretching from the town of Zintan, 150 kilometers south of Tripoli, toward the border with Tunisia.

Panos Moumtzis, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Libya, told Reuters in Tripoli that some food stocks in areas under Gadhafi’s control were likely to last only weeks.
“I don’t think there’s any famine, malnutrition. But the longer the conflict lasts the more the food stocks supplies are going to be depleted, and it’s a matter of weeks before the country reaches a critical situation,” Moumtzis said in an interview.
“The food and the medical supplies is a little bit like a time bomb. At the moment it’s under control and it’s ok. But if this goes on for quite some time, this will become a major issue,” he said.

Gadhafi says his forces are fighting armed criminal gangs and Al-Qaeda militants, and has described the NATO intervention as an act of colonial aggression aimed at grabbing Libya’s plentiful oil reserves.
Libyan television broadcast footage of Gadhafi welcoming Zuma, his first public appearance since May 11.
Speculation had been swirling in the past few weeks that the Libyan leader was injured in a NATO strike or had fled Tripoli.

A Reuters photographer in Misrata said there was heavy fighting in the suburb of Dafniyah, in the west of the city, where the front line is now located after rebel fighters drove pro-Gadhafi forces out of the city.
Speaking from a field hospital near the front line, she said 14 rebel fighters had been injured so far Tuesday, one of them seriously.
“Gadhafi’s forces are firing Grad rockets,” she said.
“The rebels tried to advance, and Gadhafi’s forces pushed back.”

Rebel fighters, out of their familiar urban battleground and now in open ground, were being outgunned, one of their spokesmen said.
“The situation is getting more difficult for the revolutionaries because fighting is going on in open places. They do not have the same heavy weapons as the [pro-Gadhafi] brigades,” the spokesman, Abdelsalam, said from Misrata.
There were reports too of clashes between rebels and forces loyal to Gadhafi in the Western mountains.
A rebel spokesman in the town of Zintan told Reuters by telephone: “Fighting took place last night in [the village of] Rayayna, east of Zintan … It continued until the early hours of this morning. Both sides used mortars.”