TRIPOLI – Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi warned on Thursday that the West has started something in Libya which it cannot control, the state news agency JANA reported.
“They have started something dangerous, something they cannot control. It will be out of their control no matter what methods of destruction they have at their disposal,” Gaddafi said. He was referring to the Western coalition led by Britain, France and the United States which launched a military campaign against Libya on March 19 to enforce a UN no-fly zone and to protect civilians.
Gaddafi specifically addressed, without naming them, “the leaders who decided to launch a second Crusader war between Christians and Muslims across the Mediterranean sea,” saying they must resign. He accused those leaders of causing death and destruction and said: “It is they who have been stricken with madness.”
“They want to impose their strength and have destroyed mutual interests between the Libyan people and their own people… They want to drag us back to mediaeval times,” JANA quoted Gaddafi as saying. “The solution is that they resign immediately and their people should find new leaders to replace them who will respect relations between peoples.”
Several Western leaders have urged Gaddafi, who has been in power for more than four decades, to quit in the face of the deadly uprising against his iron-fisted rule.
Defection shows Libya regime crumbling: rebels
BENGHAZI – The defection of Libya’s foreign minister showed that Moamer Gaddafi’s regime was “crumbling,” the rebel leadership said Thursday, adding that it believed more key figures were also looking to flee to Europe.
The departure of Mussa Kussa to Britain, where he announced he was resigning his post in the Gaddafi government, was “testimony to how his (Gaddafi’s) regime is crumbling,” a rebel spokesman, Mustafa Gheriani, told reporters in the opposition stronghold of Benghazi. “He was one of the top lieutenants, very trusted by Colonel Gaddafi,” he said. AFP
