The transitional government of Libya’s triumphant rebels decided to extend, by up to a week, the deadline given to Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi and his remaining fighters to surrender, but the fugitive leader rejected the ultimatum and raged at his enemies in a new broadcast that called for the country to be “engulfed in flames”.Rico says not taking your calls is such an insult...
Colonel Qaddafi, whose whereabouts remained a mystery, delivered the screed in an audio message that was first broadcast by al-Rai, a Syrian television channel that has often carried pro-Qaddafi news and propaganda. It was not clear how the channel received Colonel Qaddafi’s message, apparently his first after more than a week on the run, or whether it had been prerecorded. “We will fight the collaborators,” he said. “The Libyan people are not a herd of sheep. They are heavily armed.” Daring the rebels to find him, he improbably predicted that Libyans would rise up and reject the new government as well as the NATO powers that have been bombing his forces for months under a United Nations mandate to protect civilians. “Their supplies will run out, but ours will never run out,” he said. “Let there be a long fight, and let Libya be engulfed in flames.”
The rebel decision to extend the ultimatum, coming on the anniversary of Colonel Qaddafi’s rise to power in Libya 42 years ago, means that the original deadline set by the rebels, Saturday, has been pushed back to 10 September. The step came as the new government seemed to gain momentum, with more countries, notably Russia and Romania, formally recognizing it as the legitimate authority in Libya, and with an international conference on post-Qaddafi Libyan reconstruction convening in Paris.
Rebel leaders who have massed forces outside Surt, the Mediterranean coastal enclave that is Colonel Qaddafi’s hometown, told the BBC that they had been negotiating with tribal elders there and had decided to give the talks another week. Abdel Hafidh Ghoga, deputy chairman of the Transitional National Council, the provisional rebel government, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying the deadline for surrender had been extended because “there are good indications that things are moving in the right direction”.
Colonel Qaddafi has been a fugitive since the rebels invaded Tripoli late last month, in what quickly became a decisive turn in the six-month-old conflict. He and his subordinates have consistently rejected calls to surrender, but his second wife, along with three of his children and their families, fled to neighboring Algeria this week.
Rebel officials said they believed Colonel Qaddafi was hiding in the desert town of Bani Walid, 150 miles southeast of Tripoli. There has also been speculation that he had sought refuge in Surt, or in a third center of armed loyalist resistance, the town of Sabha in southern Libya.
The rebels have demanded that Algeria repatriate the Qaddafi relatives who sought sanctuary there, but there has been no indication that Algeria would do so. An Algerian newspaper, al-Watan, reported that Colonel Qaddafi had also sought asylum in Algeria, but that its president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, refused to take his telephone calls.
01 September 2011
What'd you think he'd say?
David Kirkpatrick and Rick Gladstone have an article in The New York Times about Qaddafi:
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