Talks Fail for Gadhafi Bastion Surrender, Rebels Poised to Attack

Negotiations for the surrender of Moammar Gadhafi’s forces in the Libyan town of Bani Walid have failed and will not resume, the chief negotiator for the National Transitional Council said Sunday.

"I am leaving the military commander to resolve the problem," Abdullah Kenshil said when asked if an attack would now be launched on the town southeast of Tripoli where at least one of Gadhafi’s sons is reputed to be hiding.

Kenshil said the pro-Gadhafi fighters wanted to come out with their weapons but were refused.

"They demanded that the revolutionaries enter Bani Walid without their weapons," he added, charging that it was a pretext for an ambush.

Kenshil also said Gadhafi himself, his sons and many of his family had been in Bani Walid, without specifying when.

Two of Gadhafi’s sons, Al-Saadi and Mutassim, are suspected of being still in Bani Walid.

Negotiations through the intermediary of tribal leaders began several days ago with the hope of taking Bani Walid without bloodshed.

Kenshil said earlier that the pro-Gadhafi forces numbered between 30 and 50 men, "very well-armed, with machine-guns, rocket-launchers and snipers."

Anti-Gadhafi fighters have moved to within 15 to 20 kilometers of the town with a view to launching an assault if the talks broke down.

Earlier on Sunday, a commander of the fighters said talks aimed at securing the peaceful surrender of Gadhafi’s forces in Bani Walid had been abandoned and an assault on the oasis town was imminent.

"We are getting ready," said Mohammed al-Fassi, checkpoint commander in the village of Shishan, 70 kilometers north of Bani Walid.

"Negotiations between Gadhafi’s men and our forces have ended. These people aren't serious. Twice they promised to surrender only to go back on their word," he said.

A local spokesman for the National Transitional Council (NTC) now governing Libya said the frontline stood 15 to 20 kilometers north of Bani Walid and that troops were poised for an advance.

"We are waiting for orders to go into the city," Mahmoud Abdul Aziz said.

"Last night the Gadhafi forces tried to move out. Our fighters responded and there were some clashes lasting a few minutes."

The new government's interim interior minister Ahmed Darrat told Agence France Presse he was confident the town's capture was imminent. "We expect Bani Walid to be freed today or tomorrow," he said.

On Saturday, the deputy chief of the military council in the town of Tarhuna, north of Bani Walid, said Gadhafi’s son Al-Saadi was still in Bani Walid, along with other senior figures of the fallen regime, while prominent son Seif al-Islam had fled the town.

Preparations for the offensive appeared to be well underway even though NTC chairman Mustafa Abdul Jalil said in Benghazi on Saturday that a truce declared until September 10 remained in force.

"We are in a position of strength to enter any city but we want to avoid any bloodshed, especially in sensitive areas such as tribal areas," he said, adding military deployments would continue during the ceasefire.

Civilians who managed to flee Bani Walid said that most of Gadhafi’s forces had now fled taking their heavy weaponry with them into the surrounding mountains.

NATO said its warplanes had hit an ammunition storage facility near Bani Walid on Saturday.

Alliance aircraft also hit a barracks, a military police camp and 11 other targets in Gadhafi’s hometown Sirte on the Mediterranean coast and carried out bombing raids on two other towns that remain in the hands of Gadhafi forces -- Buwayrat west of Sirte and Hun in the al-Jufra oasis.

NTC forces east of Sirte on Sunday moved to disarm members of the Hussnia tribe suspected of loyalty to the ousted strongman, an AFP correspondent reported.

The NTC spokesman in London Guma al-Gamaty said that when captured, Gadhafi should stand trial in Libya not before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague that has issued an arrest warrant for suspected crimes against humanity committed during the Libyan uprising.

"The ICC will only put Gadhafi on trial for crimes committed over the last six months," Gamaty told BBC television.

"Gadhafi is responsible for a horrific catalogue of crimes committed over the last 42 years, which he should stand trial for and answer for and he can only answer for those in a proper trial in Libya itself."

Gamaty said it would be up to the court to determine whether a death sentence was appropriate for Gadhafi, but added: "The court will be fair and just and will meet all international standards.

"It will be a fair trial -- something that Gadhafi has never offered any Libyans who criticized him over the last 42 years."

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini warned against too thorough a purge of Gadhafi appointees in the Libyan apparatus, pointing to the chaos that had ensued in Iraq when even low-ranking officials of Saddam Hussein's Baath party were stripped of their jobs after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

"If somebody used to work for the regime but has no blood on his hands, why destroy all the structure, all the apparatus of Libya like we've done in Iraq, making a big mistake?" he said.

In Iraq, U.S. administrator Paul Bremer's policy of sidelining all Baath party members and dismantling the army put hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on the streets, swelling the ranks of the insurgency.

In fresh revelations from documents obtained by media and rights groups in Tripoli, Britain's Sunday Times said London invited two of Gadhafi’s sons to the headquarters of the SAS special forces unit in 2006 as former premier Tony Blair tried to build ties with the Libyan regime.