All my people love me, says Gaddafi

“All my people love me,” Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi insisted yesterday, ignoring mounting global pressure to step down and perhaps head into exile after four decades at the helm of his country.

“They love me. All my people with me. They love me all. They would die to protect me,” the veteran Libyan leader said speaking in halting English in an interview with Western media shown on the BBC’s world news website.

“No demonstrations at all in the streets,” claimed Colonel Gaddafi, who has ruled his north African country for more than 41 years. “No one is against us, against me for what?” But witnesses said Col Gaddafi’s forces had hit back yesterday, with fighter jets bombing ammunition stores in the eastern town of Adjabiya, around 100 kilometres south of the capital Tripoli.

Two planes also attacked a munitions dump at Rajma, just south of the city, a military reservist said.

Meanwhile Col Gaddafi sat down for the interview with ABC television channel as well as the BBC and The Times of London as world powers ramped up pressure on his regime. There has been global outrage at a brutal crackdown on opposition demonstrations against Col Gaddafi’s regime which erupted nearly two weeks ago in the wake of the upheavals in its neighbours Egypt and Tunisia.

Pro-democracy forces now control vast swaths of the east of the north African country, but rights groups say at least 1,000 people have been killed in the crackdown.

After initially groping for a response, the US has now openly called for Col Gaddafi to step down, suggesting he should go into exile.

“The people of Libya have made themselves clear: it is time for Gaddafi to go – now, without further violence or delay,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a UN Human Rights Council meeting on Libya in Geneva.

But Col Gaddafi hit back, saying he had been betrayed by the US.

“I’m surprised that we have an alliance with the West to fight Al-Qaeda, and now that we are fighting terrorists they have abandoned us,” he said, according to ABC television.

“Perhaps they want to occupy Libya,” ABC quoted him as saying, adding Col Gaddafi had insisted he could not step down because he is neither a president nor a king. He also challenged those who have suggested he has stashed money abroad to produce evidence of such funds and said he would “put two fingers in their eye”, the BBC reported.

The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen said the interview had taken place in a restaurant in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and Col Gaddafi had seemed relaxed throughout.

“He laughed quite a bit when asked various questions. He seemed very unconcerned about foreign pressure, saying the Libyan people were behind him, the Libyan people loved him,” Mr Bowen wrote on the BBC website.

Col Gaddafi also alleged the people who had come onto the streets were under the influence of drugs supplied by Al-Qaeda. He added people had seized weapons and that his supporters were under orders not to shoot back.

The brutal crackdown on opposition protests has killed at least 1,000 people and set off a “humanitarian emergency”, the UN refugee agency UNHCR has said, warning of a mass exodus from Libya.

Faced with the threat of massacres or a wave of refugees on their Mediterranean flank, senior Western officials, including France’s Prime Minister Francois Fillon, were yesterday weighing military options.

“We’re studying all options to ensure that Colonel Gaddafi understands that he has to go. I know that people have mentioned military solutions, and these solutions are being examined by the French government,” Mr Fillon said in an interview with RTL radio.

One option on the table was using Nato air power to impose a no-fly zone over Libya to stop Col Gaddafi from using air strikes against his own people. However, such a step would require UN approval, experts said.