TRIPOLI – South African president Jacob Zuma arrived in Tripoli yesterday to try to broker a peace deal with Muammar Gadafy, just hours after Nato’s secretary-general said the Libyan leader’s “reign of terror” was coming to an end.
Last night Libyan state television broadcast footage of Col Gadafy greeting President Zuma, the first time the Libyan leader had been seen in public since May 11th. Col Gadafy was shown greeting the South African president and other officials and then walking with them down a corridor. The two delegations were then seen sitting in white armchairs in a large room. The broadcaster did not say where the meeting took place.
Meanwhile, in Rome, eight Libyan army officers, including five generals, appeared at an Italian government-arranged news conference, saying they were part of a group of up to 120 military officials and soldiers who defected from Gadafy in recent days. 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 Gen Oun Ali Oun, said : “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.” Libyan UN ambassador Abdurrahman Shalgam, who has also defected from Col Gadafy’s regime, said all 120 of the military personnel were outside Libya now but he did not say where they were.
Mr Zuma’s walk down the red carpet at Tripoli airport was accompanied by a band and children chanting “We want Gadafy!” in English while waving Libyan flags and pictures of the leader.
Mr Zuma’s visit is his second since the conflict began in February. His previous trip made little progress because Col Gadafy has refused to end his 41-year-old rule, while rebel leaders say that is a precondition for any truce.
Nato warplanes have been raising the pace of their air strikes on Tripoli, with Col Gadafy’s Bab al-Aziziyah compound in the centre of the city being hit repeatedly. Journalists escorted into Bab Al-Aziziyah after Mr Zuma’s arrival found a group of about 160 African visitors to Libya chanting pro-Gadafy slogans and waving flags of nations including Chad, Niger and Ghana, in an apparent show of pan-African unity.
Britain said on Sunday 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 Col Gadafy that it was time to quit.
“Our operation in Libya is achieving its objectives . . . We have seriously degraded Gadafy’s ability to kill his own people,” Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a Nato forum in Varna, Bulgaria. “Gadafy’s reign of terror is coming to an end,” he said. Col Gadafy 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.
Britain and other Nato powers are ratcheting up the military pressure to break a deadlock that has seen Col Gadafy hold on to power despite a rebellion and weeks of air strikes.
US admiral Samuel Locklear, commander of the Joint Operations Command at Naples, declined to comment on whether Nato would put forces on the ground but suggested a small force might be needed to help the rebels once Col Gadafy’s rule collapses.
Britain said the Enhanced Paveway III bombs, each weighing nearly a tonne and capable of penetrating the roof or wall of a reinforced building, had arrived at the Italian air base from which British warplanes fly missions over Libya.
The military alliance says it is acting under a mandate from the United Nations to protect civilians from attack by security forces trying to put down the rebellion against Col Gadafy.
But the more aggressive tactics risk causing divisions within the alliance backing the intervention, and could also lead to Nato being dragged closer towards putting its troops on Libyan soil, something it is anxious to avoid. – (Reuters)