France Press

TRIPOLI: The issue of disarming former rebels who fought Moammar Gadhafi’s forces is “more complex” than it appears, but these militias will be demilitarized soon, Prime Minister Abdul-Rahim al-Qeeb said Thursday.

“This [disarming of militias] is a much more complex issue than it may sound,” the prime minister told a select group of foreign reporters after talks with visiting Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd.

His statement comes two days after the capital’s city council requested militias from outside Tripoli to leave by Dec. 20.

Qeeb said his two-week-old interim government was holding talks with militias with a view to disarm them and has “solid and detailed programs” to rehabilitate these tens of thousands of former rebels.

“We are working on demilitarizing these groups. We are talking to them and I think we will achieve our goals and objectives any time soon,” Qeeb said, adding that a major militia had already agreed to leave the city out of its own accord.

“There is a group, a major player in this group of freedom fighters coming from another city” who will leave Tripoli, he said in English, without naming the militia.

They will do this “not because they heard somebody telling them it is two weeks or else … No. It is because we have been talking to them,” he added.

“They understand the situation and they actually expressed themselves interest to leave the city.”
Qeeb clarified that the Dec. 20 deadline given to militias from outside Tripoli to leave was issued by the city council and not by his government.

“We did not give any deadline … It’s not that we don’t want to set deadlines because we are comfortable with the situation. It’s just that we feel that things don’t happen like this.”

On Tuesday his office issued a statement which quoted the city council’s deadline to militias, triggering media reports that it was the Libyan government which had proposed the timeline for former rebels to quit the capital.

Soon after Qeeb’s remarks, the military council from Libya’s port city of Misrata, said it has told its fighters present in Tripoli to leave the capital.

“The military council of Misrata has asked its revolutionaries brigades to withdraw their armed men from the city of Tripoli, including those responsible for security missions for the transitional government,” Libya’s official news agency WAL reported, citing a statement by the council.

It said the withdrawal of Misrata fighters comes “in response to the peaceful demonstration in Martyrs Square yesterday by residents of Tripoli to end the presence of armed men in the capital’s streets and squares.”
Misrata’s military council said that its fighters will be available for Tripoli only when the government presents the body with a “formal” request.