Transitional National Council says Libyan people must overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, though they welcome reports that US is prepared to supply arms
Britain is going about as far as it can to roll out the red carpet for Libya's opposition leaders short of inviting them for tea at the palace.
David Cameron met Mahmoud Jabril, special envoy of the National Transitional Council, in Downing Street this afternoon. Facilities have been laid on for Jabril to meet the key participants at the London conference, including Hillary Clinton.
Britain felt it could not invite Jabril to attend today's conference at Lancaster House because it cannot follow exactly in the footsteps of Nicolas Sarkozy who recognised the council as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people. Ministers point out that, unlike France, Britain recognises states and not governments.
So no tea with the Queen and no seats round the big conference table at Lancaster House. But the foreign office did give the council a significant platform this afternoon when it opened up its main briefing room for a press conference by Jabril.
The chairman of the council was so busy meeting various dignitaries that he made his apologies and did not turn up. So it was left to two other senior figures to make the case. They were Guma El-Gamaty, the council's UK co-ordinator, and Mahmoud Shammam, the council's head of media who is based in Washington.
The opposition leaders appeared shortly after the council published a Vision of a Democratic Libya which called for a new constitution that will uphold "intellectual and political pluralism and the peaceful transfer of power". The declaration was hailed by David Cameron in his opening remarks to the conference.
The two men had a clear message: it is up to the Libyan people to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, though they welcome outside help.
This is what Shammam said:
We are very grateful for the help we are getting from the international community but we still believe that liberation of Libya is the responsibility of the Libyan people. We started peaceful demonstrations. We are not responsible for the change that happened. Gaddafi used excessive military power to destroy our people.
Historically Libyans did not ask for foreign aid. We went through this before. We fought Italian occupation for 40 years. So we are ready to fight Gaddafi by ourselves. But he has extended his power to the limit that our civilians cannot take it any more.
Now what we want exactly [is] that we continue our peaceful revolution. We are going to go to Tripoli and show Gaddafi that this is the means we have to go.
Shammam was asked whether the council would accept arms from outside amid reports that the US has not ruled out arming the rebels. This is what Shammam said when Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's Middle East editor, asked for his response to the reports:
Of course we are welcoming any help we can get from any country. Until now we did not have any so I am not going to comment on something that we have not had the offer yet and we have not asked [for] specifically. We asked everybody to help us in many ways. One of them is giving our youth some real weapons.
If you look to the reports that you have from the streets of Libya or from the cities of Libya you will see that our people have very light arms. You can see that just regular cars are fighting with machine guns. We don't have arms at all, otherwise we finish Gaddafi in a few days. But we don't have arms. We ask for the political support more than we are asking for the arms. But if we get both that would be great.
Shammam said that if Gaddafi goes the council would establish law and order:
We are not going to hang people in the street. We are going to establish law and order and we are going to try everybody who is responsible for any crime. We are not going to take the revenge on the streets of Tripoli or Benghazi.
A cousin of Gaddafi's could be high on the list of figures associated with the regime who could face trial. Guma El-Gamaty said he believed that a cousin of the Libyan leader was responsible for raping Iman al-Obeidi, the woman who claims she was raped by government militiamen.
This is what El-Gamaty said:
We think it is genuine case of kidnapping and raping. We think that this is just the tip of the iceberg of the sort of things the security services and security people carry out in Libya. It is one way of terrorising the population, of using it as blackmail and kidnapping.
We think the perpetrator in that particular case is somebody who is high profile and very close to Gaddafi himself, in fact a cousin of Gaddafi.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/wintour-and-watt/2011/mar/29/libya-middleeast
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