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| Africa North |
| Defiant Qadhafi vows to defeat Nato |
| 2011-06-18 |
| [Dawn] Hours after loud blasts shook Libya's capital Tripoli, Muammar Qadaffy ... Custodian of Wheelus AFB for 42 long years ... vowed to defeat NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the style of the American pants... as his forces launched a deadly rocket assault on rebel-held Misrata. State television on Friday aired Qadaffy's comments in what it said was a live telephone call from the Libyan leader, who has gone underground since Western nations began waging an air war in March to protect civilians from a bloody protest crackdown. "NATO is bound to be defeated," Qadaffy said in the speech broadcast on loudspeakers in Tripoli's Green Square as thousands of flag-waving regime supporters staged their biggest rally in weeks. "We are determined to change nothing in our country other than by our own free will... We are resisting, we are fighting," he declared. The speech came hours after loud kabooms shook Tripoli, where the Qadaffy has his residence, as NATO warplanes constantly overflew the Libyan capital. At least five further kabooms were heard early Saturday in and around the capital, an AFP journalist reported. In the western rebel enclave of Misrata, 10 people were killed and 40 maimed when Qadaffy loyalists fired a volley of Grad rockets ...Soviet-developed 122-mm rockets, usually launched from trucks. Newer versions are reported to have a range of up to 30 km.... at the lifeline port city, rebel front man Ahmed Hassan told AFP. All the victims were civilians, he said, and were hit when rockets slammed into the western and eastern gates of the city. One woman was killed when a rocked struck her home, he said. Hassan said that Qadaffy forces are bombing Misrata nearly every day, and that there were no air strikes by the NATO-led coalition on the loyalist forces on Friday. Elsewhere, a road linking the towns of Zintan and Yafran was under the complete control of the bully boyz and dotted with destroyed tanks and abandoned government vehicles, an AFP correspondent said. The road, a key sector of the route to the border with Tunisia, was seized two days after the rebels overran the nearby villages of Ghanymma, Lawania and Zawit Bagoul. Libyan Prime Minister Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... i al-Mahmudi said the Qadaffy's regime was in contact with rebels for negotiations -- something the bully boyz have repeatedly denied. "Our doors are open to all and we are in contact with all the parties," Mahmudi told news hounds. "We are sure meetings have taken place" in Egypt, La Belle France, Norway and Tunisia, and we "can name the persons," who attended from the rebels' side. "Ask the Egyptians, French, Norwegians and Tunisians for information. They will tell you the truth," he said. "We are sure of our meetings and everything has been recorded." Mahmud Jibril of the opposition National Transitional Council (NTC) earlier denied suggestions by a Russian envoy that the rebel leadership had been negotiating with the Qadaffy regime. "I can assure you there is and there was no negotiation between the NTC and the regime," said Jibril, who is in the Italian city of Naples where NATO's Libya operation is headquartered. At a joint news conference with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, Jibril said that if there were talks, the NTC would "announce it out of commitment to our friends all over the world". An NTC official in the opposition stronghold Benghazi in eastern Libya was even blunter. "Qadaffy must go. Anyone from the rebel side who negotiates his staying in power would immediately have an NTC arrest warrant issued against him," the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... . Mahmudi said Thursday that Qadaffy's departure was a "red line" that cannot be crossed, despite growing international calls for him to quit and the armed insurrection against his 41-year rule. Russian envoy Mikhail Margelov said that Qadaffy representatives had made contact with the rebels in European capitals including Berlin, Gay Paree and Oslo. La Belle France said it had no knowledge of the negotiations. "If there have been direct contacts, we're not involved and we didn't set them up," foreign ministry front man Bernard Valero said. NATO on Friday slammed as "cynical" an offer in an Italian newspaper interview by Moamer Qadaffy's son, Seif al-Islam, that the regime in Tripoli was ready to organise internationally supervised elections. "Once again, it is an instance of what I would call a cynical PR ploy," said alliance spokeswoman Oana Lungescu during a news briefing on the military campaign. "It is hard to imagine that after 41 years in which Qadaffy abolished elections, the constitution, political parties, trade unions... (That) overnight a dictator would turn into a democrat." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Maybe if we pound his compound a few more times... |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2011-06-18 13:00 |