Members of the so-called Libyan contact group said in a statement in Qatar that they may create a “temporary financial mechanism” to finance the rebels using Libyan government assets frozen abroad.
Short-term loans are “an option on the table that we discussed” at the Qatar meeting, Ali Tarhouni, the Interim Transitional National Council’s finance minister, said in an interview in Benghazi. The borrowing, which may be for as long as two years, could be repaid when Libyan assets are unfrozen, Tarhouni said. Reserves at the rebels’ central bank in Benghazi may not be enough to cover import needs for a month, he said.
The contact group, which includes the U.S., the U.K., France and other countries lending military support, agreed at the meeting that “Qaddafi and his regime had lost all legitimacy and he must leave power, allowing the Libyan people to determine their own future,” according to a statement released yesterday after the meeting in Doha.
Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jasim Al-Thani said his country would “look into” supplying military equipment to the rebels. In London, Prime Minister David Cameron told the BBC that the U.K. would provide body armor.
Anglo-French Commitment
Libya has been effectively split in two since the early stages of the two-month conflict, a division that has helped push oil prices up 25 percent. Crude for May delivery dropped 0.2 percent to $106.85 a barrel at 6 a.m. in New York. It reached a 2 1/2-year high of $112.79 a barrel on April 8.Libya holds Africa’s biggest oil reserves. Qatar confirmed April 12 that it is marketing Libyan oil on behalf of the opposition and is providing energy products to Benghazi.
NATO airstrikes against Qaddafi’s military since March 19 haven’t stopped artillery attacks and sniper fire on cities such as Misrata, in the west of the country, or enabled the rebels to take and permanently hold strategic towns such as the oil port of Ras Lanuf.
Eight rebels were killed in an attack by government forces near Misrata, Al Jazeera television reported today.
No Let-Up
Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who met in Paris yesterday, reaffirmed their commitment to ousting Qaddafi and called for no let-up in air attacks, according to a French official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified. The leaders agreed that arming the rebels wouldn’t violate the United Nations embargo, the official said.There are divisions among NATO countries over the means to achieve democracy in Libya, though the allies are united around that goal, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told reporters in Berlin today.
Libya’s Foreign Minister Abdul-Ati al-Obeidi said Qaddafi is seeking a political solution to the war along the lines of this week’s African Union proposal involving a withdrawal of troops from civilian areas, according to his Cypriot counterpart Markos Kyprianou, who met Obeidi in Nicosia today. Libya’s government will cooperate with the European Union and international organizations over aid supplies, Obeidi said, according to Kyprianou.
The rebels rejected the African plan because it didn’t specify Qaddafi’s departure.
NATO foreign ministers, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, meet today in Berlin to consider what further actions might be taken by the alliance, which has been stymied in its effort to stop the assault on Misrata.
‘Protected Zone’
Qaddafi’s actions in Misrata may constitute war crimes, Clinton said in a statement yesterday. She gave no indication of what additional steps NATO can take to stop it.The rebels’ interim government appealed to the United Nations to declare Misrata an “internationally protected zone” and help prevent “a massacre of men, women and children” in the besieged city.
“There is fighting going on and electricity and water have been cut off throughout the city,” making it difficult to distribute aid that reaches Misrata by sea, Abdulhamid Elmadani, secretary-general of the Libyan Red Crescent, said in an interview yesterday in Benghazi. He said three other west Libyan towns, with an estimated 15,000 people in each, are in even worse straits as they lack the port that enables deliveries to reach Misrata.
More than 1,000 people have been killed and “several thousand” wounded in Misrata in the six-week siege, according to Suleiman Fortia, a spokesman for the rebels’ council.
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