Rome Libya talks to focus on rebels funds

Rome Libya talks to focus on rebels funds

French Foreign Minister, Alain Juppe has said that Libya talks, which will hold on Thursday in Rome, would focus on securing financing for Libyan opposition rebels and facilitating contacts with defectors from Muammar Gaddafi's government.

Juppe said this while speaking with France 24 television on the scheduled talks.

He said that the meeting of the so-called "Contact Group" on Libya, including Western and Middle Eastern countries, the UN, the AU and the Arab League, would discuss setting up a financing mechanism.

"It's not easy. There are Libyan assets that are frozen and for legal reasons unfreezing them is difficult," Juppe said.

Rebel fund

The rebel national council has said it hopes for as much as three billion dollars in credit from Western governments to help them meet pressing needs for food, medicine and state salaries.

Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, said last month that the Rome talks would look at ways to free assets belonging to Gaddafi and enabling oil from rebel-held areas to be sold.

Libya battle

Libya's two-month-old civil war is in stalemate as Gaddafi's better-equipped forces have halted a rebel advance to the west.

Juppe, however said that coalition attacks on army targets in Tripoli would continue until there was a breakthrough.
"There's no question of getting bogged down in Libya," he said.

The Rome talks

Juppe said another aim of the Rome meeting was to build contacts with defectors from Gaddafi's government and officials who want to leave it.

"There are a lot of officials from Tripoli who want to talk. We are going to try to coordinate," he said.  

He said that participants would also be asked to consider French President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to organise a separate conference in the weeks before a gathering of "friends" of Libya, including Gaddafi defectors and various political groups, to work on a political solution to the crisis.

REUTERS/Williams