Malta is playing a part in last-ditch negotiations between rebel leaders and tribes loyal to Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte to try to avoid a bloodbath in the dictator’s last remaining bastion.

Abdul Karim Bazama, security adviser of the Libyan provisional government, told The Times in Benghazi it was now “a matter of days” before Col Gaddafi was caught or captured.

He was speaking before boarding a plane to Malta where talks are partly being coordinated. He arrived in the afternoon and held meetings with the Maltese government and Libyan officials before proceeding to Cairo, The Times has learnt. No details of the meeting emerged.

The negotiations come as the rebels started closing in on Col Gaddafi in an area 40 to 50 kilometres south of Tripoli.

Mr Bazama said fighters in Tripoli were tracking a convoy of trucks believed to include Col. Gaddafi and at least two of his sons, though he could not confirm if Saif al Islam, the dictator’s heir apparent, was in the convoy.

“He cannot move to the mountain; we are squeezing the only gateways he has left. He is being cornered. I don’t think he can reach Sirte or Sabha anymore. He is manoeuvring in one area south of Tripoli and could be captured or killed anytime now... it’s a matter of a few days,” he said.

The hunt for the elusive leader, which is reportedly aided by French and British special troops, has led to a few false reports since the rebels’ march on the capital on Sunday. On Thursday, rebels wrongly believed to have cornered him near the Bab Aziziya compound.

Col Gaddafi issued yet another defiant audio message on Thursday urging loyalists: “Do not leave Tripoli to those rats, kill them, defeat them quickly.”

The council is confident they are closing in on Col Gaddafi, though they are also working on the diplomatic front to negotiate a surrender by loyalists in Sirte.

“They (the people of Sirte and loyalists) are now in a critical situation. They are afraid. However, we keep trying and there are negotiations going on at the moment at tribal level as well as with other tribes in the south,” he said.

Mr Bazama said the National Transitional Council was hoping to persuade loyalists to denounce Col Gaddafi before he is captured or killed because this would facilitate the national reconciliation process.

“From a moral point of view, it will be better for them because if he is caught or killed, it will be a big defeat for them, so we wish they will take the right decision immediately,” he said, insisting the council did not have a problem with Col Gaddafi’s tribe or extended family but only with his immediate family.

Mr Bazama said the council meant business when it spoke against revenge.

Having been released himself from the infamous Abu Salim prison last year after serving an eight-year term for “phoney charges” of planning to overthrow the regime, Mr Bazama has a few scores to settle with the regime. But, he insisted, there would be no revenge but justice. “We don’t want to build the new Libya on the value of hate because that is the value Gaddafi built his regime on,” he said, pointing out instead to a truth and reconciliation process on the lines of the post-apartheid South Africa model.

“Coincidentally, Mohammed Gaddafi, a brigadier relative of the Gaddafis who surrendered recently, was the man behind the trumped up allegations against me. The fighters called me to see what they should do with him and I told them to let him go. In my particular case, I won’t even proceed against him legally. Others can do that... but not me.”

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