Libya's interim oil minister aware of Gaddafi's whereabouts

One note said London was keen for Blair to meet Gaddafi in a Bedouin tent   Libya's National Transitional Council expects to restart oil production at the Misla and Sarir oil fields in around 10 days time, the North African country's new oil minister Ali Tarhouni said on Saturday. When asked when Libya's oil production would restart, Tarhouni told a news conference: "I was told yesterday... that production will begin in the Sarir and Misla fields on the 12th or 13th of this month," Reuters reported. During the news conference in Tripoli Tarhouni was asked if Gaddafi was in the town of Bani Walid, as NTC military commanders have said they believe, Tarhouni said only: "As for Gaddafi himself...we know where he is." Libya's new civilian leaders are beginning the process of restoring order in Tripoli after the revolution. Interim interior and security minister Ahmed Darrad said in Tripoli on Friday that fighters from elsewhere who had helped to liberate the capital should now go home. "Starting Saturday there will be a large number of security personnel and policemen who will go back to work," he told AFP. "Now the revolutionaries of Tripoli are able to protect their own city."
The demand aims at defusing possible tensions between Tripoli's freshly emerged revolutionaries and the scores of hardened fighters who poured in from other towns to topple Kadhafi's regime.
NTC leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil has said a panel of wise men and tribal leaders will be set up to aid reconciliation.
Mr Jalil's announcement came as he returned to Libya from a summit in Paris on the country's future.
He also said the NTC would move to the capital next week from its long-held base of Benghazi.
Reuters reports that Russia has invited members of Libya's National Transitional Council to Moscow to discuss the future of Russian energy contracts in the country, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday.
"We will discuss all of this," Lavrov told reporters after being asked about the fate of Russian oil contracts agreed with Libya's deposed leader Muammar Gaddafi. "They (Libya's interim government) offered to hold contacts, and we have invited their respective representatives to Moscow, at their request."
"We will discuss all this with them."
Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the world to do what it could to help Libya in its transition, while on a visit to Australia.
"We are working to make sure that the United Nations can respond quickly to requests by the Libyan authorities," he said at a news conference in Canberra.
A U.N. team was on the ground in Libya to re-establish the organization's presence there amid dire water, food and fuel shortages, the United Nations said Friday.
The U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Libya, Panos Moumtzis, arrived in Tripoli with a team of U.N. officials who hope to assess and address problems with food and water in the war-torn country.
"The humanitarian situation remains fragile," Moumtzis said in a statement. "It is critical to ensure an immediate and effective U.N. presence on the ground to help identify and assist vulnerable people who have been particularly affected by the conflict and the disruption of services."
The U.N. delegation, which arrived in Libya on Thursday, will assess and assist with water shortages, explore ways to protect civilians and investigate food shortages.
Canada's foreign minister John Baird said Friday his country was prepared to help Libya's new authorities ensure their stockpiles of weapons were not going to fall into the "wrong hands."
The North African country under strongman Muammar Gaddafi, now a fugitive, had accumulated "significant stockpiles of mustard gas and other chemical weapons that have been secure for a number of years," Baird told public broadcaster CBC.
A key concern, he said, was to ensure "the weapons of mass destruction are safeguarded and don't get into the wrong hands."
Canada, he added, was ready to work with Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) and assist in efforts to craft a new constitution Baird also said all held funds should be unfrozen by Western nations and the United Nations for the new Libyan authorities to get their country up and running: "we're urging them to do it as expeditiously as possible," he said.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Thursday said there would be an immediate end to Canadian sanctions imposed on Libya earlier this year under Gaddafi's rule.
Harper at the "friends of Libya" conference in Paris said Ottawa was repealing the sanctions "in support of the Libyan people and the new governing authorities."
Meanwhile, files have been found showing the level of co-operation between the US, Britain and Col Gaddafi's intelligence agencies, the Wall Street Journal reports.British and US intelligence cooperated closely with Libya, with prisoners being offered to Moamer Kadhafi's regime under the rendition programme, a report said Saturday citing files found in Tripoli.
British daily The Independent said the secret documents discovered in the office of former Libyan foreign minister Mussa Kussa also show that Britain passed details of exiled opponents to Kadhafi's spies.
The cache further shows that it was the office of former prime minister Tony Blair that requested that a 2004 meeting with Kadhafi in Tripoli should take place in a Bedouin tent, the daily said.
There was no immediate reaction from British or US authorities to the report.
The paper said the documents would raise questions about the ties that Britain, in particular, and the United States forged with Kussa and the regime as the western powers tried to bring Libya out of isolation.
Kussa flew to Britain in March and defected, but despite being accused of rights violations was allowed to fly to Qatar the following month.
The Independent said the papers include letters and faxes to Kussa headed "Greetings from MI6" (Britain's foreign intelligence service) and a personal Christmas greeting signed by a senior British spy with the epithet "Your friend".
It also cites a US administration document, marked secret, saying that it was "in a position" to deliver a man named as Shaykh Musa, a member of the Al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, "to your physical custody."
"We respectfully request an expression of interest from your service regarding taking custody of Musa," it quotes the document as saying.
In a separate report  the Wall Street Journal said files show strong cooperation between the CIA and Kadhafi's intelligence agencies, including shipping terror suspects to the North African country for interrogation.
The Central Intelligence Agency, under the administration of then-president George W. Bush, brought terror suspects to Libya and suggested questions that Libyan interrogators should ask them, it said, citing documents found at the headquarters of Libya's External Security agency.
The CIA also moved to set up in 2004 "a permanent presence" in the country, the Journal said, according to a note from CIA top operative Stephen Kappes.
Secret CIA rendition flights transported dozens of terror suspects around the world following the 9/11 attacks, often for interrogation in third countries.
Meanwhile British intelligence in a letter dated April 16, 2004 informs a Libyan security agency that a Libyan opposition actvist had been freed from British detention, the Independent said.
A further document purportedly from MI6 seeks information about a suspect travelling on a Libyan passport, adding that it is a "sensitive operation".
The cache also shows that a statement given by Kadhafi announcing that his regime was giving up weapons of mass destruction in a bid to shed its pariah status was put together with the help of British officials.
A letter addressed to a Libyan official from British intelligence attached a "tidied up version of the language we agreed...", it said.
Meanwhile the Independent said a sizeable amount of the correspondence was devoted to preparations for Blair's landmark Tripoli visit, and showed that Kussa played a role as conduit with the premier's 10 Downing Street office.
In one, it said an MI6 officer wrote to Kussa saying: "No.10 are keen that the Prime Minister meet the leader in his tent. I don't know why the English are fascinated by tents. The plain fact is the journalists would love it."
Blair was duly pictured shaking hands with Kadhafi in a Bedouin tent.
On Friday In Tripoli, thousands of people, most of them women, gathered in Martyrs' Square in a show of support for the new leadership, also raising US and French flags while mocking Kadhafi by wearing curly wigs.
"Do you feel how the air we breathe is pure?" said Manal Al-Deber, a 35-year-old pilot.
"I am so happy. I cannot express my happiness. People smile at each other, greet each other. I have not seen like this moment in my entire life," Salam Elamin said.
People chanted, "Libya will always be free," and carried the country's new flag.
On Friday, in a telephone call to Reuters in Tunisia from what he said was a “southern suburb of Tripoli,” Moussa Ibrahim derided the ability of the National Transitional Council to run the country after its rebel fighters forced Gaddafi into hiding and said their Western backers should negotiate with the ousted leader.
And he mocked “the irony” that NATO was now allied to an Islamist fighter who once had contact with al-Qaeda and to whom the new government has given military command of the capital.
Sounding relaxed and speaking English in tones familiar from his many televised news conferences at Tripoli’s Rixos hotel during the past months of civil war, Ibrahim declined to be specific about where he was calling from -- though it was indeed a Libyan number which appeared on the caller-ID screen.
“I move around a lot and I don't have an Internet connection at the moment,” he said, after giving his current location as “a southern suburb of Tripoli.”
“Actually,” he went on, “Only yesterday, I was with Mr Seif al-Islam. I joined him on a tour circling Tripoli from the south.” London-educated Seif, long seen as Qaddafi’s heir apparent, had met tribal leaders and other supporters, he said.
“We are still very strong,” he added, giving no information on the location or condition of Muammar Qaddafi.
There was no way to verify his comments which, like those broadcast this week by Qaddafi himself and by Seif, serve as a public reminder to Libyans that the man who ruled with his family for 42 years remains at large and may pose a threat, at least by means of a guerrilla war, to the new authorities.
Mr Ibrahim said the fight was "very, very far from over" and that much of the regime's army was still in control of many areas.
"We will be able to capture Tripoli back and many other cities in the near future," he said. Repeating allegations that Abdel Hakim Belhadj, the NTC military commander for Tripoli, is an al-Qaeda supporter, Ibrahim said: “For God’s sake, Tripoli is governed by ... a very famous international al Qaeda leader.”
“He’s a star of terrorism,” he added, in comments which may resonate with some in the West who have voiced concern about the role of Islamist movements in the Arab Spring revolts in Libya and elsewhere against secular autocrats.
“The citizens of the West need to understand that their politicians are ... aligning with the most evil forces.”
“Al-Qaeda is fighting with NATO against us.”
Ibrahim said fighting would continue if the NTC and its Western allies did not accept a window of opportunity to negotiate now with the Qaddafis: “They need to negotiate with us ... otherwise they will never have a country to govern.” A failure to talk soon could lead to “total war, not just in Libya,” Ibrahim said. “God knows what consequences that will have for Europe and the northern coast of the Mediterranean.” Nonetheless, Ibrahim insisted: “Within even a few weeks, a few months, even a couple of years, we will have Libya back.”
Col Gaddafi's whereabouts remain unknown, but several audio messages reported to be from him have been broadcast by a loyalist TV channel in recent days in which he vowed to continue the fight. The rebel fighters have given the Gaddafi-held towns of Sirte, Bani Walid and the southern town of Sabha until 10 September to surrender or face a military assault. Even so, Libya's new leaders said they will move to Tripoli next week after their forces defeated Moamer Kadhafi and pledged to restore order and stage elections in 20 months. "We will go to Tripoli next week. Tripoli is our capital," National Transitional Council (NTC) chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil told dignitaries and tribesmen in the eastern city of Benghazi on Friday.
However,anti-Gaddafi fighters have been pushing towards the dictator's hometown of Sirte, despite having extended a deadline for the city's surrender. Fighters are gathering at nearby towns in case an attack is needed, with brigades pushing to the town of Wadi Hawarah, just 30 miles away. Khaled Zintani, a spokesman for anti-Gaddafi forces in the remote mountain town of Zintan, said: "Military action will be the last option, because after the fall of the capital, we are not in a hurry." He said tribal elders in Sirte had asked that a delegation from Zintan be sent to Sirte to help with negotiations. This was necessary, he said, because of a long history of bad blood with anti-Gaddafi fighters from towns closer to Sirte. Another anti-Gaddafi spokesman, Abdel-Hafiz Ghoga, said: "The rebels at the front line are very eager to move without delay. "They live in harsh conditions there in the middle of the desert, and in hot weather."