A special envoy for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Tripoli yesterday, as the international body and Libya’s new leaders stepped up efforts to bring order and democracy to the country.
Ian Martin landed at a military airbase in the capital, after Ban said the world body was ready to assist in re-establishing security following the nearly seven-month uprising that ousted Muammar Gaddafi.
“I am here now to discuss with the National Transitional Council how the UN can be most helpful in the future,” Martin told reporters on arrival.
“I think the future leaders of Libya face a very big challenge, they have already shown the ways in which they are ready to tackle that challenge and it will be the commitment of the UN to assist them in any way they ask.”
Almost two weeks since anti-Gaddafi forces overran Tripoli, there were signs of life returning to normal in the capital.
“We are ready to serve our country again,” said 22-year-old officer Abdulkader Ammar, on patrol for the first time since Gaddafi’s fall.
“The war is over and we have to go back to work,” Abdullah Turki, a member of the NTC’s stabilisation team told AFP.
“It will take time, but it will come, people are eager to participate in rebuilding Libya.”
There was still no firm word on the whereabouts of the toppled strongman after he defiantly threatened to lead a protracted insurgency in audio tapes aired by Arab media last Thursday.
The victors extended until next weekend an ultimatum for the surrender of remaining loyalists to give time for negotiations to bear fruit, but moved troops towards Bani Walid, southeast of the capital, where they suspect Gaddafi may have taken refuge.
Some 600 men aboard 200 combat vehicles moved to within 20 kilometres of Bani Walid without meeting any opposition, before returning to their base in Misurata, fighters said.
Abdulrazzak Naduri, deputy chief of the military council in Tarhuna, between Tripoli and Bani Walid, said tribal chiefs had been given until 10 a.m. today to surrender the town.
But NTC head Mustafa Abdel Jalil said in Benghazi that the truce declared until September 10 was in force for everywhere still holding out, including Sirte, Bani Walid and Sabha in the south.
“We are in a position of strength to enter any city but we want to avoid any bloodshed, especially in sensitive areas such as tribal areas,” he said, adding military deployments would continue during the ceasefire.
Naduri said Gaddafi’s son Saadi and his spokesman Mussa Ibrahim were still in Bani Walid, 180 km from Tripoli, but the most prominent son, Seif al-Islam, had fled two days ago.
Nato said it had struck targets of pro-Gaddafi forces last Friday in the vicinity of Sirte, Bani Walid, and Hun, half-way between Sirte and Sabha in the south. The head of the NTC earlier told dignitaries in Benghazi, Libya’s second city where the uprising began, that it would transfer its headquarters to the capital in the coming days as it moved to return the North African nation to normality. “We will go to Tripoli next week. Tripoli is our capital,” Abdel Jalil said.
Bolstered by promises made at an international conference in Paris last Thursday of billions of dollars in cash from unfrozen assets of the Gaddafi regime, the NTC is preparing to implement a road map for establishing democracy.
For the first eight months it will lead Libya, during which a council of about 200 people will be directly elected to draft a constitution, NTC representative in Britain Guma al-Gamaty told the BBC on Friday.
The draft would be debated and then put to a referendum, he added, referring to plans drawn up in March and refined last month.