NTC forces assault one of last Kadhafi bastions
SHISHAN, Libya (AFP) - Fighters for Libya's new rulers began an assault to overrun one of the last bastions held by pro-Moamer Kadhafi forces, as secret files shed light on his fallen regime's links to US and British spy agencies.
"We are preparing to enter Bani Walid and we will fight," Mahmud Abdel Aziz, a local spokesman for the National Transitional Council told AFP at a checkpoint in Shishan, just dozens of kilometres (miles) north of Bani Walid.
A dozen vehicles, including pick-ups mounted with heavy machine guns, were seen heading further south towards Bani Walid while a commander, Ossama Ghazi, also set off on Saturday, saying: "There is fighting."
Abdel Aziz said he expected Bani Walid to "fall within hours."
"People there have asked for more time but our patience has worn out."
Earlier, the deputy chief of the military council of the town of Tarhuna, further north, said fighters for Libya's new leaders have given forces in Bani Walid until 0800 GMT Sunday to surrender.
Abdulrazzak Naduri said Kadhafi's son Saadi was still in Bani Walid, along with other regime cronies, while prominent son Seif al-Islam had fled the town.
"The revolutionaries have given an ultimatum to the tribal chiefs in Bani Walid," Naduri told AFP in Tarhuna, some 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Bani Walid.
"Either they raise the white flag of surrender or the fighting begins."
The offensive appeared to be well underway even though NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil said in Benghazi that a truce declared until September 10 was still in force.
"We are in a position of strength to enter any city but we want to avoid any bloodshed, especially in sensitive areas such as tribal areas," he said, adding military deployments would continue during the ceasefire.
Naduri said Saadi Kadhafi, the toppled strongman's spokesman Mussa Ibrahim, and Mansur Dau, head of the revolutionary committees that propped up Kadhafi's regime, were still in Bani Walid.
But Seif al-Islam, the regime's most prominent face and vocal interlocutor, had fled two days ago, he said. "God alone knows which road he took," he added.
Meanwhile, Kadhafi regime intelligence files seen by AFP on Saturday appear to document deep cooperation between the CIA, MI6 and the former Libyan regime, including the shipping of terror suspects for regime interrogation.
The cache of documents, originally obtained by Human Rights Watch from a Libyan security archive, includes blunt details about the secret 2004 seizure from Malaysia of an Islamic militant, who by twist of fate now commands the revolutionary forces in Tripoli.
The letters include an apparent CIA memo informing the Libyan authorities about the journey of "Abdullah al-Sadiq" and his pregnant wife from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok, where the US would "take control" of the pair and hand them over to the regime.
Sadiq -- named as a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group -- is said to be the nom de guerre of Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, who now leads the militia of Libya's new rulers in the capital Tripoli.
In another letter, a senior member of Britain's intelligence agency congratulates Libya's spymaster on the arrival of Sadiq.
The documents also show how the Central Intelligence Agency, under the administration of then US president George W. Bush, brought other terror suspects to Libya and suggested questions Libyan interrogators should ask them.
The cache also shows it was the office of former British prime minister Tony Blair that requested that a 2004 meeting with Kadhafi in Tripoli should take place in a Bedouin tent.
An unnamed US official quoted by the Wall Street Journal noted that, at the time, Libya was breaking diplomatic ice with the West.
The cache is also shows that a statement given by Kadhafi announcing his regime was giving up weapons of mass destruction in a bid to shed its pariah status was put together with the help of British officials.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague refused to be drawn Saturday on the reported files detailing the closeness of ties between London and Tripoli, insisting they related to the previous government.
"What we're focused on is getting the necessary help to Libya, more recognition for the National Transitional Council, getting the assets unfrozen so we avert any humanitarian problems in Libya," he told Britain's Sky News.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman told AFP: "It is the long-standing policy of the government not to comment on intelligence matters." In Washington, the State Department similarly declined to comment.
Meanwhile, The Sunday Times reported that Britain invited two of Kadhafi's sons, Khamis and Saadi, to the headquarters of the SAS special forces unit to watch "VIP demonstrations." But the Ministry of Defence said the visits did not go ahead.
"The article alleges that they were invited on two particular dates in 2006. We have checked and no such visits took place," a spokesman told AFP.
In the latest revelations from intelligence documents obtained by media and rights groups in Tripoli, the paper said Blair had also helped another of Kadhafi's sons, Seif al-Islam, with his doctoral thesis.
Elsewhere on Saturday, a special adviser for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Tripoli, as the international body and Libya's new leaders stepped up efforts to bring order and democracy to the country.
Ian Martin landed at a military airbase in the capital, after Ban said the world body was ready to assist in re-establishing security following the nearly seven-month uprising that ousted Kadhafi.
And almost two weeks since anti-Kadhafi forces overran Tripoli, there were signs of life returning to normal in the capital.
There was still no firm word on the whereabouts of the toppled strongman after he defiantly threatened to lead a protracted insurgency in audio tapes aired by Arab media on Thursday.
The victors extended until next weekend an ultimatum for the surrender of remaining loyalists to give time for negotiations to bear fruit.
Libya's new leaders set for Tripoli move
TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libya's new leaders said Friday they will move to Tripoli next week after their forces defeated Moamer Kadhafi and they won wide international support for plans to bring democratic rule.
"We will go to Tripoli next week. Tripoli is our capital," National Transitional Council (NTC) chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil told dignitaries and tribesmen in the eastern city of Benghazi.
Three days after overrunning Tripoli, the NTC announced on August 26 plans to transfer its executive branch to the Libyan capital, but said the whole of the council and its chair would only move once security was guaranteed.
Abdel Jalil's statement came after fallen strongman Kadhafi warned of a lengthy and widespread guerrilla war in messages broadcast from his unknown hideout.
In Tripoli, thousands of people, most of them women, gathered in Martyrs' Square in a show of support for the new leadership, also raising US and French flags while mocking Kadhafi by wearing curly wigs.
"We will win or we will die" and "Libya is one and united," read their banners.
Bolstered by promises made at a conference in Paris on Thursday of billions of dollars in cash from unfrozen assets of the Kadhafi regime, the NTC prepared to implement a roadmap for bringing democracy to Libya.
A body tasked with drafting a constitution should be elected within eight months and a government within 20 months, NTC representative in Britain Guma al-Gamaty told the BBC on Friday.
For the first eight months the NTC would lead Libya, during which a council of about 200 people should have been directly elected, Gamaty said, referring to plans drawn up in March and refined last month.
"This council... will take over and oversee the drafting of a democratic constitution, that should be debated and then brought to a referendum," he said.
Within a year of the council being installed, final parliamentary and presidential elections should be held.
The new leadership was also boosted on the economic front, with the weekly Middle East Economic Survey reporting Libya could at least partially resume crude oil output and refining within days.
Quoting local officials, MEES added however that the country would take time to reach its pre-war oil production level of 1.7 million barrels per day (bpd).
Interim interior and security minister Ahmed Darrad said in Tripoli on Friday that fighters from elsewhere who had helped to liberate the capital should now go home.
"Starting Saturday there will be a large number of security personnel and policemen who will go back to work," he told AFP. "Now the revolutionaries of Tripoli are able to protect their own city."
The demand aims at defusing possible tensions between Tripoli's freshly emerged revolutionaries and the scores of hardened fighters who poured in from other towns to topple Kadhafi's regime.
"We are grateful for the work of brigades from Misrata, Zintan and elsewhere, but as soon as we finish organising our own ranks they should go and rest." said Abdullah Naqir, head of the newly formed military council of Tripoli.
Senior envoys from more than 60 countries met the leaders of the NTC in Paris to endorse the fledgling new regime and offer practical support.
Even once sceptical Russia and China and Libya's reluctant neighbour Algeria agreed to back the new administration.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the uprising's most prominent supporter from the outset in February, said around $15 billion had already been unfrozen and more would follow.
Sarkozy and other leaders urged the NTC to begin a "process of reconciliation and forgiveness."
Abdel Jalil said Libyans had "proved their courage and their determination" in their fight to topple Kadhafi, and it was now up to them to bring about the promised stability, peace and reconciliation.
Kadhafi, however, was having nothing of it.
"Prepare yourselves for a gang and guerrilla war, for urban warfare and popular resistance in every town... to defeat the enemy everywhere," he warned in one of two audio tapes aired on Arab satellite television late on Thursday.
"If they want a long battle, let it be long. If Libya burns, who will be able to govern it? Let it burn," he said on the 42nd anniversary of his coup that toppled the monarchy and seized power.
His foes say Kadhafi and his son Seif al-Islam may be in Bani Walid, southeast of the capital and still held by loyalist troops, where some clashes have taken place.
But the NTC has put its assault on the centres still controlled by pro-Kadhafi forces, in particular his hometown of Sirte, on hold until September 10 to try to negotiate a peaceful end to the six-and-a-half month conflict.
East and west of Sirte, the attackers have halted their advance while talks with tribal leaders go on, but at the same time they are preparing for an assault.
In Qum Qandil, west of Sirte, where reinforcements have been pouring in, fighters carefully checked their heavy machine-guns and rifles, loading shells into clips ready for use.
Libya's Zoo struggles to keep animals alive
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — The body of a gazelle lies near an empty feeding bin, flies swarming around the corpse. A male lion growls angrily, leaping toward the front of his cage when a rare visitor approaches the bars.
This is life in the Tripoli Zoo, which has found itself a casualty of the war to oust Moammar Gadhafi.
Once one of the city's best-loved family destinations, today it is 110 dusty acres of listless animals and overgrown, sunburned grass. Empty bullet casings are scattered everywhere. A patch of black grass near the monkey cage shows where a rocket-propelled grenade hit. A turtle cage is cracked by gunfire, garbage is piled everywhere and three forlorn hippopotamuses hang their heads in a filthy pit, standing next to a shallow pool of fetid water. Because of the city's water shortage, the zoo's skeleton staff can only clean the animals' cages every four or five days.
At least two of the nearly 600 animals at the zoo died from the stress of living in a combat zone, zookeepers say, and many more are suffering from shortages of food and water.
The zoo is in the former Gadhafi stronghold of Abu Salim, which saw some of the fiercest fighting during the battles for Tripoli, and was the last neighborhood to come under rebel control.
"The animals were nervous at the beginning of the fighting because of the shooting and the loud sounds," said Ibrahim Basha, the zoo's head keeper for 24 years.
But if things are awful now at the zoo, life was never easy.
During the Gadhafi era, corruption and administrative chaos made it difficult to simply keep the animals fed, said the director, Abdel-Fattah Husni.
The zoo often wouldn't get its monthly budget allotments, he said, and it has racked up nearly $1.5 million in debts to the company that provides the animals' food. At this point, the company is feeding the animals on credit.
If the supplier stopped providing food for just a couple days, he said, the zoo would be "finished."
"The government didn't care about human lives. Do you really think they cared about how the animals were?" Husni said.
The exception was a family of lions who received daily visits from the inner circle of the Gadhafi regime.
Al-Saadi Gadhafi, one of the sons of the longtime dictator, owned nine of the 19 lions in the zoo. He would go into the cages to play with them when they were cubs. And until just over a week ago, with rebels pressing hard on the capital, al-Saadi spent time with a one-year-old lion named Hilal, along with his parents and two sisters.
During a visit Thursday, Hilal closed his eyes in pleasure when Husni reached through the bars to softly pet his head.
Al-Saadi Gadhafi "would come to visit the lions even in the middle of the war, until he fled," said Husni, who has been the zoo's director for 17 years, and who lives on the grounds with his family.
These days, the lions spend most of their time lying listless inside their dirty cage. A zookeeper feeds them by flinging raw chickens into the cage, where they land with a thump — and the hungry lions jump to grab their share. Only 15 of the zoo's 100 employees have been showing up for work in recent days.
Things were supposed to be far better this year. Thursday marked the 42nd anniversary of the 1969 military coup that brought Gadhafi to power, and the zoo was supposed to be renovated as part of the celebration. It had been under construction for two years, but Husni said that stopped when the Korean contractors working on it disappeared after anti-government protests erupted in mid-February.
Husni said he has repeatedly reached out to the rebels, asking for security to ensure there is no looting. But the rebels are busy, still searching for Gadhafi and his sons — including al-Saadi.
Now, Husni hopes a rebel leader emerges who is an animal lover, saying "it would be a tragedy if the zoo just ends in this shape."
No matter what, Husni and Basha are not going anywhere.
"These animals are my family now. I can't leave them," Basha said.
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