Gaddafi renews ceasefire bid, refuses to quit

Gaddafi renews ceasefire bid, refuses to quit

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has renewed his ceasefire bid as he turned down calls for his exit.

Gaddafi, who talked through the South African president, Jacob Zuma showed no sign of his likelihood to heed to the calls of Western leaders to hand over power.

After a visit to Libya on Monday, Zuma told reporters that Gaddafi wanted a ceasefire including an end to NATO bombing.

Zuma said Gaddafi was not ready to leave office but he is prepared to press efforts to find political solution to the crisis on ground.

Recounting the discussion he had with Gaddafi, Zuma said: "We discussed the necessity of giving the Libyan people the opportunity to solve their problem on their own."

The South African president said a lasting solution to the conflict could be reached only through the involvement of all parties.

Zuma's visit to Libya was his second since the conflict began in February.

His previous trip made little progress because Gaddafi had refused to end his 41-year-old rule, while rebel leaders maintained that is a 0precondition for any truce.

Libya battle

However, NATO aircraft was reported to have resumed attacks, striking what it called civilian and military sites in the desert settlement of Al-Jufrah, 460 kilometres (285 miles) southeast of Tripoli.

Coalition aircraft also struck a number of civilian and military sites in the capital's Tajura district.

NATO warplanes have also 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.

Britain said on Sunday it was to add what it described as "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 NATO forum in Varna, Bulgaria.
 
"Gaddafi's reign of terror is coming to an end," he added.
 
Holding on to power

The western leaders have maintained their stand not to stop bombing until Gadaffi steps down.

The two-month old NATO-led air campaign against Gadaffi forces is led by the western leaders.

Meanwhile, Gaddafi has continued denying attacking civilians, saying his forces were obliged to act to contain armed criminal gangs and al Qaeda militants.
 
He claims the NATO intervention is an act of colonial aggression aimed at grabbing Libya's plentiful oil reserves.

Defectors
 
Eight Libyan officers, including five generals have made an appearance 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 Gaddafi in recent days.
 
They said they defected two months after a Libyan foreign minister and former espionage, Chief Moussa Koussa and a senior diplomat Ali Abdussalm Treki, resigned.

“What is happening to our people has frightened us,” one of the defecting officers, General Oun Ali Oun, said.

"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," he added.

Libyan UN ambassador, Abdurrahman Shalgam, who has also defected from Gaddafi, said all the 120 military personnel were outside Libya now but he did not say where they were.

Controlled territories

While the east is in the hand of rebels, Gaddaffi’s forces have retained control of the west.

Foreign journalists in Tripoli have limited freedom of movement and have had difficulty verifying the extent of hostility or support for the leader in a capital with a fearsome security apparatus.

 
REUTERS/Shakira