AFRICA_Libyan Rebels Set to Talk, but Maybe Not With Qaddafi’s Ex-Ally

Libyan Rebels Set to Talk, but Maybe Not With Qaddafi’s Ex-Ally

By ROD NORDLAND Published: April 12, 2011

BENGHAZI, Libya — Rebel leaders here said Tuesday that they were not ready to commit to talks with Moussa Koussa, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s former confidant who defected to Britain but left there for Qatar.


Bryan Denton for The New York Times
Residents of Benghazi, Libya, the rebel stronghold, went about their business on Tuesday, but the situation in Misurata was dire after attacks by government forces.

Doha, Qatar’s capital, is hosting a group of countries that have expressed support for the Libyan rebels, and British officials announced Tuesday that Mr. Koussa was headed there, presumably to take a role in trying to mediate between the rebels and the Qaddafi government.

“We are sending a delegation to Doha solely to meet with the contact group, but it’s not part of the agenda to meet with Mr. Koussa,” said Abdul Hafidh Ghoga, the spokesman for the rebels’ National Transitional Council, at a news conference here. “It’s not something rejected or accepted.”

Mr. Ghoga, noting the rebels’ rejection of an African Union delegation’s request to negotiate a cease-fire during a visit to Benghazi on Monday, said that the Qaddafi loyalists had shelled Misurata throughout the delegation’s visit, proving their lack of good faith. The rebels have steadfastly maintained that they will not enter into negotiations until Colonel Qaddafi and his sons give up power.

At the same news conference, Suleiman Fortia, the representative on the council from Misurata, gave a detailed description of the desperate conditions in that rebel-held port city in western Libya that has fallen into desperate straits as a siege by pro-Qaddafi forces has stretched thin its stocks of food, water and medical supplies.

Mr. Fortia said that 1,000 people had been killed and thousands more wounded in attacks by loyalist forces, which have surrounded the city and occupied portions of it. He offered no verification for those figures.

In addition, he said, electricity, fuel and water had been cut off, and the city remained under attack by tanks, artillery and snipers. The city’s port, a vital lifeline, has been opened by Western air attacks but is under constant threat from Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.

Human Rights Watch quoted doctors in hospitals in Misurata as saying that they had seen at least 250 dead but that the actual number was much higher.

“The Libyan government’s near siege of Misurata has not prevented reports of serious abuses getting out,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “We’ve heard disturbing accounts of shelling and shooting at a clinic and in populated areas, killing civilians where no battle was raging.”

The participants in the meeting in Qatar were expected to discuss military aid to the Libyan rebels. Qatar, along with France and Italy, has recognized them as the legitimate government of Libya. In addition, the rebels said they had received offers of assistance from 30 other countries that had not formally recognized them, including the United States and Britain.

Mr. Koussa’s defection to Britain came as a surprise, and he was questioned by investigators of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. Family members of victims of that bombing reacted with anger when they learned that Britain had allowed him to go to Qatar.

British officials were elusive when pressed by reporters for details of the arrangements that made it possible for Mr. Koussa to leave Britain, after keeping him under close guard at a safe house somewhere in the London area since he arrived in Britain two weeks ago.

While Mr. Koussa was being questioned by British intelligence officials, the government said repeatedly that he would not be granted immunity from prosecution under British or international law for a string of terrorist acts that Western governments believe were carried out by Libya’s foreign intelligence service, which Mr. Koussa led for 15 years, until 2009.

The Lockerbie bombing killed 270 people, mostly Americans; the Qaddafi government agreed in 2002 to pay $2.7 billion in compensation. Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, said Tuesday that Scotland had assurances that the police could question Mr. Koussa further after his trip to Qatar, suggesting that the trip had been made on the condition that Mr. Koussa would return to Britain.

A Foreign Office spokesman said Britain expected that Mr. Koussa would return, but then set off a wave of criticism by saying, “Moussa Koussa is a free individual who can travel to and from the United Kingdom as he wishes.”

Speaking to the BBC, Robert Halfon, a Conservative member of Parliament whose Jewish grandfather fled Libya in the 1970s when the Qaddafi government confiscated the homes and businesses of Libyan Jews, said: “It’s very important that our country doesn’t become a transit lounge for war criminals. We have to give a signal to the rest of the world that we cannot tolerate this.”


John F. Burns contributed reporting from London, and Kareem Fahim from Benghazi.