Libya Rebels Say They 'Refused' Talks with British Delegation

Libyan rebels had refused to talk to a British delegation who entered the country without prior arrangement and who were being sent back to London, the rebels' national council said on Sunday.

"We do not know the nature of their mission. We refused to discuss anything with them due to the way they entered the country," spokesman Abdul Hafiz Ghoqa told reporters in the rebel stronghold Benghazi.

"Now we're trying to negotiate a way for them to go back home."

He said the men came into Libya by helicopter, landing in Suluk, a small town southwest of Benghazi.

Britain has referred to the arrested men as "a small diplomatic team" but Ghoqa said: "One person claims he is a diplomat and he has some guards accompanying him."

"Eight persons were arrested and it turns out that they carried British passports. The reason that they were arrested is that they came into the country unofficially and without any previous arrangement.

"Libya is an independent nation and we have our borders which we expect to be respected by everybody."

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Sunday that a small British diplomatic team had left Libya after running into a problem while on a mission to try to talk to rebels in the eastern part of the country.

The Foreign Office declined to comment on reports earlier in the day the team included special forces soldiers who had been detained in Benghazi by opponents of Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

"The team went to Libya to initiate contacts with the opposition," Hague said in a statement. "They experienced difficulties, which have now been satisfactorily resolved."

Hague said that, in consultation with the opposition, Britain intends to send another team to Libya in due course "to strengthen our dialogue."

Earlier, Hague echoed Defense Minister Liam Fox in telling the BBC it would be inappropriate to comment on an article in Britain's Sunday Times newspaper that soldiers were captured by rebel forces when a secret mission to put British diplomats in touch with leading opponents of Libya's embattled leader went awry.

When pressed on whether the UK diplomatic team was in danger, Fox had said the government was in contact with the diplomatic team.

"It is a very difficult situation to be able to understand in detail," he said. "There are a number of different opposition groups to Col. Gadhafi in Libya who do seem relatively disparate."

The Sunday Times reported that up to eight special forces soldiers, armed but in plain clothes, were captured while escorting a junior British diplomat through rebel-held territory in eastern Libya.

The special forces intervention angered Libyan opposition figures who ordered the soldiers to be locked up on a military base, the newspaper reported.