Libya’s new leaders moved to restore order to Tripoli on Saturday, instructing fighters from the provinces to go home as they prepared to transfer to the capital from their wartime base in Benghazi.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the world body was ready to assist in re-establishing security after the nearly seven-month uprising that ousted Moamer Kadhafi, as Western governments that backed the rebels faced embarrassing questions about their previous complicity with his regime.
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 on Thursday. The victors extended until next weekend an ultimatum for the surrender of his remaining loyalists but moved troops towards Bani Walid, a desert town southeast of the capital where they suspect Kadhafi may have taken refuge.
“Starting Saturday, there will be a large number of security personnel and policemen who will go back to work,” interim interior and security minister Ahmed Darrad told AFP.
“Now the revolutionaries of Tripoli are able to protect their own city.” Darrad said that fighters from the provinces who were instrumental in ousting Kadhafi from the capital had orders to return home in a move aimed at defusing potential tensions with Tripoli residents who endured the ravages of the regime in its dying days.
The head of the provisional government, the National Transitional Council, told dignitaries in Libya’s second city of Benghazi, 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.
The new leadership must insure to keep all external forces out of the settlement process no matter how much aid they provided in overthrowing of Ghaddafi and his coterie. This is to prevent further bloodshed and continuing of civil war in the country.
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