Muammar Gaddafi’s prime minister has offered a truce to the visiting UN special envoy to Libya, Abdul-Ilah al-Khatib, in return for an immediate NATO ceasefire, as an anti-regime revolt entered a fourth month.
The head of Britain’s armed forces, meanwhile, said NATO should widen its bombing campaign to ensure Mr Gaddafi is unable to cling to power, while Pope Benedict XVI called for negotiations to end the violence.
The Prime Minister, Mr Baghdadi Mahmudi, quoted by JANA state news agency, said after meeting Mr Khatib that Libya is keen for “an immediate ceasefire to coincide with a stop to the NATO bombardment and the acceptance of international observers’’.
His country, he added, was committed to the unity of its territory and people and that Libyans had the right to “decide on their internal affairs and political system through democratic dialogue away from the bombing threat’’.
Mr Mahmudi accused NATO, which has been in charge of enforcing a UN-mandated no-fly zone over Libya, of “abuses and violations” including “political assassinations, the unjust maritime siege, bombing of civilian sites and destruction of infrastructure’’.
Soon after Mr Khatib arrived, several loud explosions shook the east of Tripoli and columns of smoke rose into the sky, residents reported from Tajura, an outlying suburb of the capital.
JANA reported “human losses and material damage” after NATO struck “military and civilian” sites in Zuara, west of Tripoli. A NATO spokesman confirmed the alliance targeted military equipment in the city.
“I can confirm we did attack this morning in the area of Zuara military equipments used by Kadhafi forces to target civilians,” he said.
The UN chief, Mr Ban Ki-moon, said this week he had urged Mr Mahmudi to halt the attacks on civilians immediately and called for “immediate verifiable ceasefire negotiations towards the peaceful resolution of the conflict and unimpeded access to humanitarian workers’’.