As world leaders at the United Nations were embracing the rebels who overthrew him, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi broke nearly two weeks of silence to denounce Libya’s new interim government and predicting its quick demise once NATO warplanes end their attacks on his forces.Rico says that Misurata is surely miserable, these days...
“What is happening in Libya is a charade which can only take place thanks to the air raids, which will not last forever,” Colonel Qaddafi said in the message on Arrai television, a station in Syria that has broadcast a number of his statements since his opponents stormed Tripoli, Libya’s capital, nearly a month ago. He has been in hiding ever since, and while the authenticity of his latest message could not be confirmed, it appeared to be the first broadcast in his own voice since 8 September. There was no indication of whether it had been prerecorded and no hint of his location. “Do not rejoice, and do not believe that one regime has been overthrown and another imposed with the help of air and maritime strikes,” Colonel Qaddafi said in the broadcast.
The development came as international recognition of the Transitional National Council, the interim government, which began as a rebel movement against Colonel Qaddafi more than six months ago, took a quantum leap at the United Nations.
The council’s leader, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, was warmly welcomed by President Obama and other world leaders, most of whom who had supported the anti-Qaddafi forces in the Libyan conflict. The new flag of Libya— an adaptation of its flag from before the Qaddafi era— flew over the United Nations for the first time in decades, and the African Union officially recognized the council as the country’s governing authority.
The former rebels still do not control all of Libya, although they have reported progress in their effort to rout the Qaddafi loyalists. A military spokesman for the anti-Qaddafi forces, Colonel Ahmed Omar Bani, said its fighters controlled as much as seventy percent of Sabha, a desert town in southern Libya and one of three remaining strongholds of armed Qaddafi supporters. Colonel Bani said the former rebel fighters still faced pockets of resistance, including in the neighborhood of al-Manshiya.
That assertion was impossible to immediately confirm. A CNN reporter with the former rebels in Sabha said they had been received “warmly” by residents in the city. The capture of Sabha would provide the interim government with a symbolic and tactical victory. Colonel Qaddafi, who attended elementary school in Sabha, referred to the city as the “first spark” in the 1969 revolution that elevated him to power. It sits on roads to Algeria and Niger that Qaddafi family members and confidants have used to escape from Libya in recent weeks.
The former rebels struggled on other fronts, sustaining heavy losses in a sixth day of fighting in the central coastal city of Surt. At least four anti-Qaddafi fighters were killed, including Noureddine al-Qon, a commander of the vaunted Tiger Brigade, one of dozens of fighting groups from the western city of Misurata that were formed during the siege of that city in the spring.
The Misurata brigades make up the majority of the force attacking Surt, and they have lost dozens of fighters to a cadre of well-armed, committed Qaddafi loyalists who still control much of that city.
Qon, who worked as a truck driver before the revolution began in February, was commanding a series of attacks on Qaddafi positions when shrapnel from a rocket hit him, according to his cousin Mohamed al-Qon, who fought with him on Tuesday. His body was flown by helicopter to Misurata, along with the bodies of two other fighters. Hundreds of people attended his funeral.
It was the second blow to the Misurata fighters in recent days: another top commander, Ibrahim al-Halbous, was paralyzed after being injured during fighting on Sunday, according to Mohammed Darrat, a spokesman for the Misurata media committee. “We knew the cost of this attack would be very high,” Darrat said. “God willing, this will be the final attack.”
Jalil, the leader of the Transitional National Council, acknowledged the battlefield losses at the United Nations. During the raising of the Libyan flag, he cited Libyan freedom fighters and the first martyrs, who, "as they were dying, urged their friends and colleagues to continue and not to surrender”.
The African Union’s change of position was significant because many of its members had close relations with Colonel Qaddafi during his four decades in power, and he often described himself as the King of Kings of Africa.
Asked about Colonel Qaddafi’s renewed call to arms, Jalil said the former leader could do nothing to threaten what Jalil said the country’s “revolutionaries” had achieved.
Earlier, Moussa Ibrahim, a spokesman for Colonel Qaddafi, was quoted in news reports as saying seventeen foreign fighters had been captured and taken into the contested town of Bani Walid for questioning. Ibrahim said the “mercenaries” were mostly French and would be shown in public soon. The French government denied that any French mercenaries were in Libya. Earlier this year, a group of French mercenaries were briefly detained in the eastern city of Benghazi after the president of their company was shot to death in a shadowy episode that the rebels have never fully explained.
21 September 2011
He would
Kareem Fahim and Rick Gladstone have an article in The New York Times about Qaddafi:
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