Tuesday 31 May 2011

Gaddafi appears on Libyan state, is open to a truce

South African President Jacob Zuma has appeared on television in Libya to say Muammar Gaddafi's is open to a truce.
He told the country's media the tyrant wanted a ceasefire including an end to Nato bombing, terms already rejected last month after an earlier mediation mission by Zuma.

Speaking in Tripoli, Zuma added: 'We discussed the necessity of giving the Libyan people the opportunity to solve their problem on their own.'
State television broadcast pictures of the embattled leader welcoming Zuma and walking along a corridor to a large room where they sat talking in grand white chairs. It did not say where the meeting took place.
Gaddafi, seen by the outside world for the first time since May 11, was shown thrusting his fist in the air as he bid farewell to the president, who was seen boarding a plane at the end of the visit. It was Zuma's second visit since the conflict began in February.
His previous trip made little progress because Gaddafi has refused to end his 41-year-old rule, while rebel leaders say that is a precondition for any truce.
However, the latest development comes as a group of top Libyan army officers defected from Gaddafi's regime and appealed to fellow soldiers to join the revolt.
The eight officers, including five generals, today issued their plea from Italy.
Italian Foreign Ministry officials presented the generals, two colonels and a major to reporters in Rome - three days after they had fled Libya..
The defections come two months after that of Libyan foreign minister and former espionage chief Moussa Koussa and the resignation of senior diplomat Ali Abdussalm Treki.
In Rome, one of the defecting officers, who identified himself as General Oun Ali Oun, told reporters: 'What is happening to our people has frightened us.
'There is a lot of killing, genocide ... violence against women. No wise, rational person with the minimum of dignity can do what we saw with our eyes and what he asked us to do.'
Another officer, Gen. Melud Massoud Halasa, estimated that Gaddafi's military forces were now 'only 20 per cent as effective' as compared to before the revolt broke out in mid-February.
He said that 'not more than 10' generals remained loyal to Gaddafi.

Former Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgam, who now backs the anti-Gaddafi rebels, told the news conference that the eight officers are 'part of 120 officials who left and abandoned the regime and are now out of Libya.'
Italy, Libya's former colonial ruler, long had close economic and diplomatic ties with Tripoli.
But Rome was among the first Western nations to break with the regime and establish formal relations with the Libyan National Transitional Council, that is representing anti-Gaddafi forces.
Gen. On Ali On read an appeal to fellow army officers and top police and security officials.
He urged them 'in the name of the martyrs who have fallen in the defence of freedom to have the courage' to abandon the regime.
The general, wearing street clothes like his fellow defectors, denounced both 'genocide' and 'violence against women in various Libyan cities'.
Another general, identified as Yahmet Salah, told reporters that Gaddafi had only two brigades left that were allegedly carrying out the arrests and killings.
The development comes as Mahmoud Shammam, of the National Transitional Council, said none of the funds from abroad, had yet reached the anti-Gaddafi forces.
It included those promised earlier this month at an international conference hosted by the Italian Foreign Ministry in Rome.
He added that a council representative would go to the OPEC meeting in Vienna next month.
Nato warplanes have been raising the pace of their air strikes on Tripoli, with Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziyah compound in the centre of the city being hit repeatedly.
Journalists escorted into Bab Al-Aziziyah after Zuma arrived found a group of around 160 African visitors to Libya chanting pro-Gaddafi slogans and waving flags of nations including Chad, Niger and Ghana, in an apparent show of pan-African unity.
Britain said this weekend it was to add 'bunker-busting' bombs to the arsenal its warplanes are using over Libya, a weapon it said would send a message to Gaddafi that it was time to quit.
'Our operation in Libya is achieving its objectives ... We have seriously degraded Gaddafi's ability to kill his own people,' Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a forum in Varna, Bulgaria.

'Gaddafi's reign of terror is coming to an end,' he said.
Gaddafi denies attacking civilians, saying his forces were obliged to act to contain armed criminal gangs and al Qaeda militants.
He says the Nato intervention is an act of colonial aggression aimed at grabbing Libya's plentiful oil reserves.

taken from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1392532/Libya-Gaddafi-appears-TV-SA-leader-Jacob-Zuma-says-tyrant-open-truce.html#ixzz1Nw4agO1y

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