The International Criminal Court will not accept embattled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s “blackmail” demands to withdraw its arrest warrant before he steps down, an official said yesterday.

“It would be blackmail that we would not accept. Investigations were made and the findings gave the ICC judges enough evidence to issue a warrant of arrest and that should not be put on the table to negotiate Col Gaddafi’s exit,” ICC deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said.

“Libyan authorities should stop attacks on civilians instead of thinking of using the warrant as a condition that can see an end to the crisis going on in that country,” she said on the sidelines of a conference for African journalists on international justice.

Mr Bensouda, however, said the United Nations Security Council has the power to ask ICC to defer a case for a year in the interest of justice.

ICC judges have issued arrest warrants for Col Gaddafi, his son Seif al-Islam, and the head of Libyan intelligence, Abdullah al-Senussi, for atrocities committed in a bloody uprising that began mid-February.

Meanwhile, up to 13 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in a Nato air strike yesterday in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, provincial police chief Mohamad Zazai said.

The coalition said those killed were family members of insurgents who also died in the strike that was called in after Afghan-led forces came under fire.

The deaths triggered protests blocking the main highway to Kabul nearby, with civilian casualties in Western military operations extremely sensitive in war-torn Afghanistan, where the Taliban have waged a decade-long insurgency.