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With Libyan rebels blocked in the north, the French military has secretly begun supplying weapons to insurgent Berber tribes in the southern mountains, who are attempting to advance on Tripoli, Le Figaro has learned. During the past few weeks, the French military has dropped weapons in the Djebel Nefousa mountains to the Berber rebels, who have taken up the fight against Muammar Gaddafis troops.
Opposition forces are stuck in the northern city of Misrata and in Brega in the east. Paris hopes the Berber insurgents initial success on the southern front is the best chance to connect to dormant opposition movements in Tripoli. The regimes mercenaries are not being paid anymore. They are barely fed and the population cannot stand the whole situation any longer, says a French source. Tripoli will rise up if the rebels reach it.
Fearing a military dead end, France decided to begin parachuting rocket launchers, assault rifles, machine guns and anti-tank grenades to rebel forces on the ground. The French military is doing so without intermediaries or the participation of its allies, not even British forces. A high-ranking military source says France could rely on a particularly advanced system for the weapons drop. There was no other way to set up the operation, he said.
Until now, weapons supplies destined for the rebels took a sometimes circuitous route: sent from Qatar and other Gulf Emirates to Benghazi, the headquarters of the National Transition Council, before being transported by boat to the port of Misrata, a coastal city caught in a long battle with forces loyal to Gaddafi.
Thanks to the extra weapons dropped in the south, rebels have secured a large zone stretching from the Tunisian border to the area of Gharian, some 60 km south Tripoli. Until now, rebels on the southern front have been progressing from west to east on a ridge that gives them a territorial advantage. But the decisive moment will occur when the insurgent forces have to go down in the plain and confront Gaddafis forces, its tanks and heavy weapons, who stand in the way of reaching the capital.
Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is calling for fresh volunteers in a months-long war with rebels attempting to bring about an end to his 42-year rule -- and women of all ages are answering, CNN has learned.
Women from in and around Gadhafi's stronghold of Tripoli have been traveling south to a training facility in Bani Walid to practice with weapons, a common sight in a country where young girls receive military training in schools.
As NATO's airstrikes crossed the 100-day mark and rebels continue to fight to oust Gadhafi, he is tapping everything and everyone in his arsenal to hold on to power.
At the training facility in Bani Walid, women are training to "defend Moammar and the country," said Sgt. Faraj Ramadan, a woman who is training other women to properly handle weapons.
"They train to use it, assemble it and take it apart, and to shoot," she told CNN recently. "They were trained and got excellent scores."
At a recent graduation at the facility, 40-year-old Fatima Masoud said she liked the training. She said she left her textile job every day at 4 p.m. to train.
"I liked training and defending my country, and now I'm am training women from all ages to use weapons," she said.
It is unclear how many have answered Gadhafi's call or how many had graduated from the program at Bani Walid.
But women are fighting alongside government forces.
A woman, who did not want to identified, fresh from the frontlines, attended the graduation. She was still wearing a cannula in her wrist.
"Do not underestimate any woman in Libya, whether old or young," the woman said. "The woman is still able to perform more than you think."
Gadhafi's government claims it has handed out more than a million weapons to civilians since the uprising began. CNN cannot independently verify the claim.
Reporting from Zintan, Libya Reports that France has been secretly supplying weapons to Libyan rebels engaged in daily battles with Moammar Kadafi's forces in the Nafusa Mountains stunned the world. It also surprised the overall commander of the rebel forces, who said Thursday that his men had never received any such weapons.
"Whoever gave us these arms should come here and tell us where he put them," said Col. Mokhtar Milad Fernana.
Although the front in eastern Libya has grounded to a stalemate, rebels in the mountainous region in the west appear to be gaining momentum in their fight against Kadafi, as they regularly capture towns and villages that were under his control.
Earlier in the week, rebel forces captured a desert arms depot filled with military vehicles, ammunition for rockets and large-caliber weapons they have used to fend off Kadafi. Rebels are attempting to push against Kadafi's forces east toward the town of Gharyan and northward toward the coastal areas near Zawiyah.
A French military official in Paris confirmed Wednesday that weapons had been dropped to the rebels in western Libya after the French newspaper Le Figaro, citing an intelligence memo and unnamed officials, said France airlifted crates full of assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Milan anti-tank missiles to rebels in the western mountains.
A French military spokesperson later described the arms as "light infantry weapons of the rifle type" dropped over several days "so that civilians would not be massacred."
"We began by dropping humanitarian aid: food, water and medical supplies," Col. Thierry Burkhard, spokesman for the French general staff, told Agence France-Presse. "During the operation, the situation for the civilians on the ground worsened. We dropped arms and means of self-defense, mainly ammunition."
But Fernana, who has commanded the rebel forces since he was elected leader of the region's various military councils on March 15, said he had not heard of any such weapons drops, even though he is in constant contact with all the mountain range's military commanders and meets weekly with them in Zintan, home to the local command.
Fernana said he contacted his associates across the region immediately after hearing reports of the French arms drops on Arab television channels, and discovered that it was news to them, as well.
He said the rebels have transformed a long stretch of highway into a makeshift runway, with markings for airplanes, and have already landed one plane as a test. He welcomed any international help, but reiterated that they haven't received any weapons from the French.
"As far as the military council is concerned," Fernana said, "we didn't hear anything."
He went on to suggest that France was engaging in psychological warfare to pressure Kadafi.
"They're fighting more of an information war," he said. "They need to fight Kadafi."
Meanwhile, Libyan state television reported fresh NATO airstrikes in the Zawiya district west of the capital, where rebels are advancing from the western mountains into the town of Bir Ghanem.
"A military source has said that the crusader NATO aggression yesterday night bombed a gate to facilitate the movement of traffic belonging to public security in the area of Bir Ghanem in Zawiyah, which left a number of people martyred and injured and destroyed a number of citizens' cars," Libyan state television reported.
PARIS The daughter of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi says both direct and indirect negotiations are being held between her father's authorities and Libyan rebels.
Aicha Gadhafi didn't elaborate during the France-2 network interview aired on French television Thursday night.
But she added to end the spilling of Libyan blood "we are ready to ally ourselves with the devil, with the rebel army."
During the translated interview filmed in a Tripoli hotel Aicha Gadhafi said her father remains "strong" and cannot leave the land where he is "a symbol, a guide."
Gadhafi's only daughter, in her mid-30s, held back tears when speaking of France's role in the NATO bombing campaign.
Aicha Gadhafi studied in France and said she had lost a daughter and brother in the bombings.
TRIPOLI, Libya -- A defiant Moammar Gadhafi threatened Friday to carry out attacks in Europe against "homes, offices, families," unless NATO halts its campaign of airstrikes against his regime in Libya.
The Libyan leader, sought by the International Criminal Court for brutally crushing an uprising against him, delivered the warning in an audio message played to thousands of supporters gathered in the main square of the capital Tripoli.
It was one of the largest pro-government rallies in recent weeks, signaling that the embattled Libyan leader can still muster significant support. Gadhafi addressed the mass gathering in Green Square, speaking from an unknown location in a likely sign of concern over his safety.
Addressing the West, Gadhafi said Libyans might take revenge.
"These people (the Libyans) are able to one day take this battle ... to Europe, to target your homes, offices, families, which would become legitimate military targets, like you have targeted our homes," he said.
"We can decide to treat you in a similar way," he said of the Europeans. "If we decide to, we are able to move to Europe like locusts, like bees. We advise you to retreat before you are dealt a disaster."
Friday's was one of the largest pro-government rallies in recent weeks.
It came just four days after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Gadhafi, his son Seif al-Islam and Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanoussi for crimes against humanity. International prosecutors allege government troops fired on civilian protesters during anti-Gadhafi street demonstrations earlier this year.
The popular uprising has since turned into a protracted civil war, with anti-government rebels controlling much of eastern Libya and parts of Libya's western mountains. NATO has been bombing government-linked targets since March.
In his speech Friday, Gadhafi denounced the rebels as traitors and blamed them for Libya's troubles. He said Libyans who fled to neighboring Tunisia are now "working as maids for the Tunisians."
"What brought you to this stage? The traitors," Gadhafi said in the audio message.
He urged his supporters to "march on the western mountains" to clear the area of weapons the French government delivered to the rebels there several days ago.
Reporting from outside Bir Ghanam, Libya Rebels in Libya's western Nafusa mountain range were less than 50 miles from the nation's capital Thursday and edging closer to their first significant victory outside their mountain stronghold, pounding the small town of Bir Ghanam with artillery and rockets.
Rebels were firing on government positions from a cement factory in the foothills of the mountains as NATO warplanes, including at least one Apache helicopter, aided in the battle by striking government troops at least three times.
The rebels had already advanced far from their home turf toward heavily populated areas controlled by Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi's forces, and they expressed fears that civilians would be caught in the crossfire once a battle to the finish began.
Bir Ghanam appeared to have been cleared of civilians. But some fighters said they feared a bloodbath in the relatively large city of Aziziya, halfway up the road to Tripoli, and possibly the key city of Gharyan, which rebels were approaching from the eastern edge of their stronghold.
"The power of Kadafi doesn't depend on his weapons," Col. Mokhtar Milad Fernana, commander of rebel forces in western Libya, said in an interview Thursday. "He uses civilians as shields to protect himself."
Although the fighting on the front in eastern Libya has ground to a stalemate, rebels in the mountainous region in the west appear to be gaining momentum.
Those rebels say they are using fresh recruits, many from other parts of the country, and weapons they've captured to fight Kadafi's forces. They say they are attacking on three fronts: Bir Ghanam, which lies on flatlands at the northern edge of rebel territory; to the west beyond the town of Kikla toward Gharyan; and to the south toward the military base at Tawama.
They have transformed a long stretch of highway into a makeshift runway, with markings for airplanes, and have already landed one plane as a test.
The rebel forces were bolstered by the recent capture of a large caches of government weapons near Zintan, where their unified command is based. However, Fernana denied that his men had received weapons from France, as claimed by French officials Wednesday.
"Whoever gave us these arms should come here and tell us where he put them," he said.
One fighter in Bir Ghanam carried what appeared to be a new Belgian-made assault rifle a type increasingly common among rebels that he said came from a crate of weapons labeled "Qatar," the Arabian Peninsula kingdom that wholeheartedly supports the effort to oust Kadafi.
Fernana, a former commander of Libyan ground forces, defected to the rebel cause after the February uprising against Kadafi's 42-year rule. He has commanded the rebel forces in the west since he was elected leader of the region's various military councils March 15. He said he was in constant contact with the mountain rebel commanders and met weekly with them in Zintan. His forces, he said, were solidly under the authority of the rebel leadership in Benghazi.
TRIPOLI, Libya Libyan prosecutors plan to charge rebel leaders with national security crimes, seeking to convict as traitors those leading the armed uprising against Moammar Gadhafi that has plunged the country into civil war, officials said Wednesday.
A judge compiling the charges laid out his case against 21 rebel officials who are based in the eastern city of Benghazi, including the National Transitional Council's head, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil. Defendants will be tried in absentia.
Rebel leaders in Benghazi could not immediately be reached for comment.
The charges include facilitating foreign intervention in Libya, providing aid and military secrets to the enemy, and seeking to topple Gadhafi's regime by force.
Judge Khalifa Isa Khalifa told reporters in the Libyan capital of Tripoli that he plans to present the case before a special court presided over by a three-judge panel next week. He said the evidence includes testimony from several witnesses.
The allegations "amount to treason of the homeland of Libya," government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said.
Khalifa did not specify what punishment the defendants could face, but Ibrahim said those found guilty of treason could face the death penalty under Libyan law.
If convicted, Libya will seek international help, such as issuing Interpol warrants, to "demand that they are brought to justice," Khalifa said.
There is little likelihood of that happening as long as fighting rages, however. The rebels enjoy significant support from allies in the West and among several oil-rich Gulf Arab states, and Gadhafi himself is wanted under an international arrest warrant.
The International Criminal Court last week issued arrest warrants for Gadhafi, his son Seif al-Islam and Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanoussi for crimes against humanity. International prosecutors at the Netherlands-based court allege government troops fired on civilian protesters during anti-Gadhafi street demonstrations earlier this year.
Opponents of Gadhafi's regime, inspired by uprisings in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, began protesting against the longtime leader in February.
The unrest quickly turned into a bloody civil war, with anti-government rebels now controlling much of eastern Libya from and pockets in the west. NATO has been bombing government-linked targets since March under a United Nations mandate to protect civilians.
TRIPOLI, Libya -- A senior Libyan official Thursday accused NATO of intensifying its bombing campaign and backing foreign mercenaries to lay the groundwork for an advance by rebels trying to topple Moammar Gadhafi's regime.
Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim told The Associated Press in an early morning interview that the alliance's increased bombings represent the "final phase" of the air campaign. But he said the push will fail and that civilians will be the ones to pay the price.
Kaim said NATO targeted police checkpoints in the Nafusa mountains southwest of Tripoli ahead of a rebel advance toward the village of Qawalish, which rebel fighters claimed they seized Wednesday. They were later pushed back by government troops, he said.
A fuel depot in the key eastern oil town of Brega was also destroyed, Kaim said. NATO said it hit equipment used to refuel government military vehicles.
The intensified campaign, he said, is focused on targeting civilian infrastructure and police checkpoints, and providing additional weapons to rebel fighters.
"The aim of these attacks is to help the rebels to advance. But I assure you, it will be another failure for them," he said.
Kaim also said Libyan forces have evidence that Colombian mercenaries funded by the West and its Arab allies have joined the rebel fighters trying to advance toward the capital Tripoli from the western rebel-held city of Misrata.
Some of the Colombian fighters had been killed in clashes near Misrata on Wednesday, he said. While Kaim was not immediately able to provide evidence to substantiate the allegation, he said it would soon be shown to journalists based in Tripoli.
NATO began airstrikes against Libya in March. The coalition and its Arab allies are operating under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians.
Some countries in the coalition have interpreted that mandate broadly, with France acknowledging it has provided weapons to rebels operating in the mountains and other countries providing non-lethal aid to rebel-held areas.
Libyan officials earlier this week showed journalists assault rifles and ammunition they claimed had been shipped to rebels by the wealthy Gulf Arab state of Qatar.
Rebel forces took heavy losses in the fighting outside Misrata Wednesday as Gadhafi's soldiers fired more than 500 rockets at rebel positions near the town of Zlitan, west of the city. Dr. Ayman Abu Shahma, a physician in Misrata, said 18 fighters had been killed along with two civilians, including a 12-year-old girl. Thirty other people were wounded.
NATO late last week announced it had begun ramping up its airstrikes on military targets in the western part of Libya. It said it is targeting government forces in cities and along "major lines of communication."
"They told us al-Qaeda fighters infiltrated the country," the shy 16-year old says, standing in a non-descript building in the coastal city of Misratah where rebels are holding their prisoners. Murad nervously bites his nails as he relates how forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi plucked him out of school and shipped him to fight at the front against a "foreign conspiracy aimed at occupying the country." With half of his country controlled by rebel forces, Gaddafi is having difficulty finding soldiers to fight his battles. Without an effective standing army, he has increasingly relied on teen soldiers, African mercenaries, and more recently women, to defend his 42-year rule.
Since the beginning of an uprising against him in February, Gaddafi has recruited Africans from neighboring countries such as Chad and Niger to fight the rebels. Journalists who visited the eastern city of Ajdabiyah in late March saw dozens of black African corpses of fighting age men. In Misratah, a European told the Associated Press he saw piles of similar bodies, apparently executed in late April. Rebels told him the men were from Mali, Chad, and Niger. A Misrati official with the rebel's political council confirmed this account to TIME. Abd al-Basit Abu Mzirig, in charge of Human Rights for the rebel's Justice division, says he met seven mercenaries who were from Mali, but possessed Libyan identification cards issued after the beginning of the February revolution. Though Gaddafi officials could not be reached for comment, they have previously denied recruiting mercenaries from neighboring countries in the conflict.
"No one whatsoever provided a shred of reliable evidence, a shred of reliable evidence that we imported mercenaries from black Africa to fight," declared Libya's Minister of Information Musa Ibrahim during a press conference last month.
Nevertheless, international organizations have censured Libya for doing so. In the United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing force against Libya, it deplored "the continuing use of mercenaries by the Libyan authorities" and imposed a travel ban on the country's ambassador to Chad and the governor of a southern province for being "directly involved in recruiting mercenaries."
Using African mercenaries is nothing new for Gaddafi. In 1972, he created an "Islamic Legion" composed of nomadic tribes such as the Tuaregs and Toubou that populate the fringes of the Sahara desert. Gaddafi dispatched them to bolster his army units fighting neighboring Chad during a war that lasted from 1978 until 1987.
Gaddafi has been compelled to employ mercenaries because his armed forces are in a decrepit state. He has long neglected his army and marginalized all but its most loyal commanders out of fear that they would overthrow him. More than a dozen coup attempts against Gaddafi during his four decades in power have stoked such suspicions. Seven years of United Nations sanctions against Libya have also taken their toll the country was prohibited from purchasing weapons because it refused to extradite two men suspected of downing of a 1988 Pan Am flight over Lockerbie Scotland. Military analysts have noted that units are under trained, under equipped, and ill-prepared to fight a war.
RUJBAN, Libya For months now, military leaders in the rebel capital, Benghazi, have boldly predicted lightning advances by their fighters and an imminent rout of the forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Tripoli that would finally snuff out his brutal four-decade rule.
The rebels have made some advances in the west in recent days, taking a small village in the Nafusah Mountains and pushing westward some distance from Misurata toward Tripoli. But a senior rebel military officer here in the mountains who said he defected last month from the Libyan Army called the prospects of a collapse by Colonel Qaddafis forces highly unlikely.
The officer, Col. Mohammed Ali Ethish, who now commands opposition fighters here, said that even if the rebels were able to reach Tripoli, shortages of fuel, personnel and weapons made it unlikely that they would try to invade or march on the heavily fortified city.
A more realistic possibility, he said, is for rebels and others within the city to rise up against Colonel Qaddafi. I hope that when we do reach the borders of Tripoli, the revolutionaries there free it, Colonel Ethish said. If we dont go in with an organized army, theres going to be a huge mess.
In the meantime, he said, the mountain fighters were focused on the more modest goal of winning cities in the region, either by persuading Colonel Qaddafis soldiers to defect or by driving them out in battle.
His candid comments raised the possibility of a protracted endgame in the Libyan conflict. They also provided little comfort to NATO countries that face increasing pressure to end the bombing campaign and seem desperate to find a quick exit, either by arming the rebels or by killing Colonel Qaddafi with airstrikes.
Although Colonel Ethish said he was speaking for the fighters from Rujban, rebel fighters from other mountain towns also said that talk of a Tripoli offensive was misplaced or premature because they had their hands full on several fronts.
To the east, they have been fighting in the city of Kiklah, where at least five rebel fighters were killed in clashes this week, commanders said. On Wednesday, the rebels pushed past Kiklah to capture Colonel Qaddafis positions in a small village, Qawalish. At least 13 pro-Qaddafi soldiers and 7 rebels were killed in that fighting.
North of Kiklah, on the plain that leads toward Tripoli, the rebels have been engaged in a running battle with Colonel Qaddafis forces in Bir al-Ghanim and have so far been unable to advance, despite NATOs repeated bombings of the area.
Colonel Qaddafis soldiers also control lowland towns stretching from the border with Tunisia to Qasr al-Hajj, leaving rebel control of the border crossing exposed and vulnerable to attack.
Colonel Ethish said the rebels were low on ammunition for the weapons they rely on in the quick, fluid battles in the mountains, including antiaircraft guns and small rocket-launchers. He also said he had seen no evidence on the battlefield of the weapons the French said they had provided to the rebels.
In several rebel-held mountain towns, new training centers are being constructed, with the aim of building the kind of disciplined forces that can cope with any chaos that follows the war, the colonel said.
In Kiklah, on the site of a former teachers college for women, hundreds of recruits will be trained to serve as a protection force for civilians in the event that Colonel Qaddafi leaves power, according to a volunteer, a small-business owner who lives in the United States and who asked not to be identified because he has family in territory controlled by Colonel Qaddafis forces.
A lot of people are going to have a lot of anger, he said. We want to keep it under control.
Colonel Ethish said a center being built in Rujban, in trailers that once stored food, would be for training special forces troops who would also serve a policing function if Colonel Qaddafi left power.
On the 25th March 2011, I found a blog by a German woman living in Libya, her blog was spreading lies sounding exactly as the crap you get from Libyan state TV and the Libyan dreadful fat poodle spokesman Musa Ibrahim, I commented there telling her to stop being a mouth piece for Gaddafi and to be real, surprisingly she answered meaning she has Internet access in Tripoli while the whole population there can not access the Internet since it was cut off about 3 weeks ago!
Now the news emerged that she is the wife of the FAT POODLE Libyan spokesman Ibrahim Musa and her previously unknown blog is getting a lot of hate comments.
My advise to her is to take her child and leave the country, tell the world about what is happening in Libya and about her nasty husband, she should save herself before she is faced with reality and as for her husband, he is a wanted man internationally and has no place to escape to.
Not to sound "diffrent" or to raise any hell, but you guys do complain alot. Im willing to bet none of you has really done anything about all the problems you bitch about personally, but you are great net warriors.
TRIPOLI, July 11 (Reuters) - Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, a son of the Libyan leader, said his father's administration was in talks with the French government, according to an interview published on Monday in an Algerian newspaper.
"The truth is that we are negotiating with France and not with the rebels," the El Khabar newspaper quoted Saif al-Islam as saying in an interview in Tripoli.
"Our envoy to (Nicolas) Sarkozy said that the French president was very clear and told him 'We created the (rebel) council, and without our support, and money, and our weapons, the council would have never existed'," it quoted Saif al-Islam as saying. (Reporting by Lamine Chikhi; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
PARIS -- France's foreign minister said Tuesday Paris has had contact with emissaries from Moammar Gadhafi who say the embattled Libyan strongman is "prepared to leave."
Alain Juppe said that while the contacts do not constitute proper negotiations, "everyone (involved in Libya's civil war) has contacts with everyone else. The Libyan regime sends its messengers all over, to Turkey, to New York, to Paris.
"We receive emissaries who are saying, 'Gadhafi is prepared to leave. Let's discuss it.'"
France was instrumental in launching the NATO-led operation of airstrikes against Gadhafi's forces, in a U.N.-mandated mission to protect civilians resisting his four-decade regime.
NATO flew more than 100 sorties Monday and hit several key targets in western Libya, including a military storage facility, three military facilities and seven military vehicles, according to an operational report issued Tuesday.
French officials have insisted that Gadhafi's giving up power is key to ending the hostilities, which began in mid-March, and Juppe said that more and more countries are now in agreement on that point.
"There is a consensus on how to end the crisis, which is that Gadhafi has to leave power," Juppe said. "That (consensus) was absolutely not a given two or three months ago.
"The question is no longer whether Gadhafi is going to leave power, but when and how," he added.
Parliament is due to vote later Tuesday on whether to continue French participation in the operations in Libya.
French law requires parliamentary approval for all military campaigns lasting more than four months. The Libya operation has wide support among lawmakers from both the governing conservative party and among the opposition Socialists, and the vote is expected to pass with a broad majority.
Juppe insisted the operation was helping shape the situation on the ground in Libya.
"Contrary to what we might hear, things are evolving in Libya," both from a strategic and political perspective, he said.
ZINTAN, Libya — Rebels in the mountains in Libya’s west have looted and damaged four towns seized since last month from the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, part of a series of abuses and apparent reprisals against suspected loyalists that have chased residents of these towns away, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.
Rebel fighters also beat people suspected of being loyalists and burned their homes, the organization said.
The towns that have suffered the abuses are Qawalish, which rebels seized last week, Awaniya, Rayaniyah and Zawiyat al-Bagul, which fell to the rebels last month. Some of the abuses, Human Rights Watch said, were directed against members of the Mashaashia tribe, which has long supported Colonel Qaddafi.
The organization’s findings come as support for the war has waned in Europe and in Washington, where Republicans and Democrats alike have questioned American participation on budgetary and legal grounds.
They also raise the prospect that the NATO-backed rebel advances, which have stalled or slowed to a crawl, risk being accompanied by further retaliatory crimes that could inflame tribal or factional grievances, endangering the civilians that NATO was mandated to protect.
Rebel officials in the mountains have played down the looting and arson in recent days. In an interview on Sunday, Col. Mukhtar Farnana, the region’s senior commander, said that reprisals were not sanctioned and that he did not know any details about them.
But Human Rights Watch said the same commander shared details with its investigators and conceded that rebels had abused people suspected of being collaborators as towns changed hands.
“People who stayed in the towns were working with the army,” the organization quoted him as saying. “Houses that were robbed and broken into were ones that the army had used, including for ammunition storage.” The commander added, “Those people who were beaten were working for Qaddafi’s brigades.”
He also said that his forces were under orders not to loot, and that if it were not for those orders “people would have burned these towns down to the ground.”
A rebel near Qawalish on Tuesday confirmed Colonel Farnana’s view, saying that the rebels had instructions not to “break anything or burn houses,” but that orders ran up against the realities of waging war with a nonprofessional, quasi-military force.
“Before we liberate an area, we do have intelligence information about the people who were helping the army in the local town,” said the rebel, Hatam Idris. “So we do know these people, and their homes. And when we liberate a town, we go straightaway to those homes.”
The houses often have ammunition or weapons in them, he said, and often are ransacked and burned. “Some people do this individually,” he said.
He described steps that might protect the homes as impractical, given the rebel army’s structure and limited manpower. “We can’t just keep guarding and looking after these homes,” he said.
Colonel Farnana said that some rebels had been arrested and punished for these crimes. His claim could not immediately be confirmed.
Rebel conduct in the war has been mixed. Many captured pro-Qaddafi soldiers have received medical treatment in rebel hospitals and have been kept in detention centers that nongovernment organizations have been allowed to visit.
If rebels would take over Tripoli, Muammar Gaddafi would consider blowing up his countrys capital, Russian envoy to Libya Mikhail Margelov told the Russian newspaper Izvestya in an interview, Bloomberg and AFP reported Thursday.
Margelov arrived in Libya last month and held talks with the Libyan government and prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmudi. The Libyan premier told me: if rebels take the city, we will cover it with missiles and blow it up, Margelov told Izvestya. The Russian envoy never met with Gaddafi.
While Libyas flamboyant leader is known for several controversial defense plans -- he vowed to defeat NATO and threatened earlier to launch a campaign of suicide attacks across Europe -- this most recent reported tactic raised eyebrows.
Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard, the Canadian top commander of NATO operations in Libya, had never heard of the Colonels suicide plans. I can report that the Gaddafi regime has given direction to its forces to destroy certain facilities as they withdraw back, such as fuel refineries and other aspects. This is a leader that will not hesitate to kill his population to achieve his personal goal, the general told The Globe and Mail. Lets be clear. Just because Gaddafi has given a direction, that does not mean that that direction is being undertaken by his troops, the General added.
On Thursday, Turkeys Foreign Ministry announced it will propose a Road Map that might bring an end to the Libyan civil war. The document will be discussed during a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and over forty members of the Contact Group of Libya on Friday.
ISTANBUL, July 15 (Reuters) - Western and Arab powers began talks in Turkey on Friday aimed at finding a political solution for Libya that would persuade Muammar Gaddafi to give up power and end a conflict that could otherwise drag on interminably.
The fourth meeting of the Libya contact group, established in London in March, comes after reports suggesting Gaddafi might be ready to give up his 41-year rule if he could get a deal.
Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is hoping that a political solution to the conflict could emerge by the Muslim holy month of Ramadan which starts in August.
Dining with NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on the eve of the gathering, Davutoglu said the focus would be on "on steps for an immediate solution in Libya", a Turkish diplomat said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton were among more than a dozen foreign ministers attending the Istanbul talks, along with heads of NATO, the Arab League and other regional organisations.
Speaking in the Hague on Thursday, Rasmussen called on NATO members to provide more warplanes to bomb Libyan military targets, as the alliance seeks to keep military pressure on Gaddafi while protecting civilians from his forces.
China and Russia, two powers who have taken a softer line toward Gaddafi, were invited to the contact group meeting for the first time, but both decided against becoming involved.
UNCERTAIN INTENTIONS
No one appears sure whether Gaddafi intends to fight on in the hope of keeping his grip on the territory round Tripoli or seek an exit strategy that guarantees security for himself and his family, but he is not seen having any future role in Libya.
"Countries are starting to look past Gaddafi. He's going to go, and the meeting can be a useful place to take stock of and prepare for that transition," one senior U.S. official told reporters aboard Clinton's plane before landing in Istanbul.
"That's the way we're thinking about this meeting: trying to see it as a pivot in this process."
Earlier this week, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said emissaries from Gaddafi's government in contact with NATO members had said that Gaddafi was ready to quit, but the U.S. officials were unconvinced.
"There are a lot of straws in the wind," a second U.S. official said. "We are not persuaded yet that any of this is decisive in terms of the red lines that we have laid out."
The international community has told Gaddafi he must cease violence against his people, withdraw his forces and step down.
ISTANBUL U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the Obama administration has decided to formally recognize Libya's main opposition group as the country's legitimate government. The move gives foes of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi a major financial and credibility boost.
Clinton announced Friday that Washington accepts the Transitional National Council as the legitimate governing authority of the Libyan people. Diplomatic recognition of the council means that the U.S. will be able to fund the opposition with some of the more than $30 billion in Gahdafi-regime assets that are frozen in American banks.
Clinton made the announcement at an international conference on Libya in Istanbul.
