Libya will hold elections in eight months and Muammar Gaddafi will be tried in the country, opposition leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said in comments published today.

"In eight months we will hold legislative and presidential elections. We want a democratic government and a just constitution," promised Abdel Jalil, chairman of the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC)

"Above all we do not wish to continue to be isolated in the world as we have been up to now," he added in comments published in the Italian La Repubblica daily.

The whereabouts of Libyan strongman Colonel Gaddafi remained unknown Wednesday as the rebels overran his Tripoli compound.

The rebel leader said that the mass of opinion within the NTC was that Gaddafi and his cohorts should eventually be judged "in a fair trial, but it must take place in Libya."

For that to happen "we need to take them alive and treat them differently from the way the colonel treated his adversaries. He will stay in the memory only for the crimes, the arrests and the political assassinations he carried out," he added.

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