Gaddafi presses assault as Ban calls for ceasefire

Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi’s forces pressed rebels in the west yesterday and threatened their eastern bastion of Benghazi, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for an immediate ceasefire.

With fighting on several fronts and casualties rising, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she hoped the UN Security Council will vote on new measures against Libya as early as today that might include a no-fly zone.

In the month-old Libyan revolt, Gaddafi loyalists killed two rebel fighters and two civilians yesterday in an assault on the country’s third-largest city of Misrata, a rebel spokesman reached by telephone said. A witness in Zintan, the first western town to go over to the opposition, said “things were starting” there, as Gaddafi’’s son Seif al-Islam predicted everything would be over in 48 hours.

And witnesses in Ajdabiya, the gateway to Benghazi, said fighting was still going on there although government sources said it had fallen on Tuesday and repeated that yesterday.

A doctor said by telephone from the town’s hospital that fighting was still going yesterday in and around in Ajdabiya, which also guards the road to Tobruk and the Egyptian border in the rebel-held east.

“We received four bodies today, all rebel fighters,” Abdelkarim Mohammed said, adding that 22 dead, mainly civilians killed by artillery or air strikes, were brought in on Tuesday.

As talks resumed in the divided UN Security Council on a bid to secure a no-fly zone, Ban spokesman Martin Nesirky said the secretary general “is gravely concerned about the increasing military escalation by government forces, which include indications of an assault on the city of Benghazi.

“A campaign to bombard such an urban centre would massively place civilian lives at risk. The secretary general is urging all parties in this conflict to accept an immediate ceasefire and to abide by Security Council resolution 1970.”

The February 26 resolution called for an end to Gaddafi’s onslaught against opponents and imposed sanctions against his regime.

In Cairo, meanwhile, Ms Clinton said “we want to do what we can to protect innocent Libyans against the marauders let loose by the Gaddafi regime.”

Britain, France and Lebanon, on behalf of the Arab nations, are seeking to overcome resistance to a no-fly zone. “What we want to do is move as fast as possible and we will be stressing the urgency of the need for action this morning,” British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said in New York.

And in a letter to the leaders of the other countries on the 15-nation council, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said: “Let us save the martyred Libyan people together. Time is now counted in days, or even hours.”

Later yesterday Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said he would hold no dialogue with the country’s rebels, whom he compared to Al-Qaeda agents, in an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro being published today.

“These are not people who we can consider holding dialogue with, because Al-Qaeda does not hold dialogue with anyone. If people want to talk to Al-Qaeda, then they should talk with (Osama) bin Laden,” he told the newspaper.

Asked about the rebel National Council, Gaddafi said: “It has no value. Its leader (Mustafa Abdel Jalil) is clueless, a sad case. These people will no doubt flee to Egypt.”

Meanwhile China said yesterday its companies were ready to resume operations in Libya, ambassador Wang Wang Shin said, quoted by the official Libyan news agency JANA.

Mr Wang, at a meeting with Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi, said Chinese firms wanted to return to complete infrastructure, housing and telecommunications contracts as well as to undertake other development projects.

Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi yesterday invited Chinese, Russian and Indian firms to produce its oil, in a bid to replace Western companies which have fled the armed revolt in the country that broke out on February 15.

China, whose workers like other expats have fled the conflict, opposes French- and British-led efforts at the UN Security Council to impose a no-fly zone that would stop Gaddafi’s warplanes from being used against rebels.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said yesterday that China also “doesn’t want any mention of a (UN) resolution leading to the international community’s interference in a country’s affairs.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergy Lavrov has requested more information from Arab states on how a no-fly zone would be policed.

In the turmoil, four New York Times journalists have gone missing in Libya, the paper said yesterday, as Britain’s Guardian newspaper said one of its journalists has been freed from detention and safely left the country.