Pressure is piling on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi after an apparent defection from his oil minister, a rebuke from Moscow, Nato air strikes on Tripoli and a leading prosecutor sought his arrest.
A Tunisian government official told Agence France-Presse that Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem, a veteran of Gaddafi’s regime, had left Libya and was in neighbouring Tunisia.
Ghanem, also chairperson of Libya’s national oil company, crossed the border by car on Saturday and checked into a hotel on the southern tourist island of Djerba, the official said.
The hotel said he had left with his family early on Tuesday for an unknown destination.
If the defection is confirmed, Ghanem would be among the most senior officials to abandon Gaddafi’s government since an uprising erupted in mid-February.
‘We raised the issues that directly’
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he held talks with Gaddafi envoys and had told Tripoli to obey the terms of UN resolutions on Libya.
The visit to Moscow by Muhammad Ahmed al-Sharif, general secretary of the World Islamic Call Society, the Libya-based group founded by Gaddafi, comes as Russia is preparing to meet with rebels fighting the regime.
“We raised the issues that directly come out of our principal position aimed first and foremost at urgently ending bloodletting in Libya,” Lavrov said after talks with Sharif.
“We raised an issue about the need for the Libyan leadership to explicitly embrace and begin the implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions in full” that call for a cessation of violence against civilians, he continued.
Lavrov said the envoy told Moscow that Tripoli was ready to cooperate if rebels and Nato ceased hostilities. “The answer that we heard could not be called negative,” he said.
Moscow, which has been strongly critical of the international campaign against Gaddafi’s regime, had agreed to talk to both Tripoli envoys and rebels who had also planned to come to Moscow but had to delay their trip.
The rebels, meanwhile, ruled out any three-way talks involving the regime.
Meanwhile, French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said in comments made public on Tuesday that the Nato-led bombardments had “wiped out” Gaddafi’s warplanes and heavily depleted his army.
Parts of Tripoli have been targeted almost daily by Nato-led strikes that began on March 19 after a UN resolution mandated a no-fly zone and called for the protection of civilians from Gaddafi’s regime.
Senussi, Libya’s intelligence chief, Gaddafi and the strongman’s son, Seif al-Islam, have been accused by International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of committing crimes against humanity in suppressing anti-regime protests that erupted on February 15.
Moreno-Ocampo is asking the court to issue warrants against the three, saying there was evidence “that Muammar Gaddafi personally ordered attacks on innocent Libyan civilians”.
A panel of judges will now decide whether to accept the application.
Moreno-Ocampo said thousands of people had been killed and about 750 000 people forced to flee since Gaddafi ordered his forces to crush the protests against his four-decade autocratic rule.
Radio messages
Nato said it has stepped up a psychological operation to pressure Gaddafi’s troops to surrender their arms and return home by broadcasting radio messages and air-dropping leaflets.
The messages also encourage loyalist troops and civilians to stay away from military installations being targeted for air strikes, said Wing Commander Mike Bracken.
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said about 14 000 people have fled to Italy or Malta by boat from Libya since the outbreak of the conflict and thousands more are planning to do the same. — AFP