NATO Eyes Libya Endgame as 8 Generals Announce Defection
South African President Jacob Zuma arrived on Monday in Libya for talks on ending the conflict as NATO said Moammer Gadhafi's "reign of terror" was nearing its end and top military officers deserted him.
In Rome, eight generals announced they had defected from Gadhafi's forces -- and also said the regime's army was now at 20-percent capacity.
Abdul Rahman Shalgham, a former foreign minister who was Tripoli's U.N. representative before switching sides, said: "These officers are among 120 who left Gadhafi and Libya over the last few days."
"We hope more will join us and the Libyan people, and leave the side of this despot and criminal," he said.
Agence France Presse reported that Zuma arrived at Gadhafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli, a regular target of NATO air strikes, at 1400 GMT, but it was unclear whether the Libyan strongman was inside, although his guards were present.
Zuma emerged two hours later, did not make any statement, and it was not immediately known if he had met Gadhafi or where he was going next.
He was greeted earlier at the airport by Gadhafi's prime minister, Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, shortly after state media said NATO-led air strikes on the town of Zliten, west of the rebel-held city of Misrata, had killed 11 people.
The South African presidency said Zuma is seeking an immediate ceasefire, to boost humanitarian aid and bring about the reforms needed to eliminate the cause of the conflict which erupted amid anti-regime protests in mid-February.
But it rejected as "misleading" reports the talks would focus on an exit strategy for Gadhafi, calling the visit part of African Union efforts to end the conflict.
Libyan state television said Zuma would discuss implementing the AU "roadmap" for peace, as it reported NATO-led raids on the Nafusa mountains in the far west and the town of Bani Walid, near Misrata.
State news agency JANA said warplanes had hit "civilian and military sites in the Wadi Kaam area of Zliten."
"There were 11 people martyred and a number of wounded," it said.
At a meeting of NATO's parliamentary assembly in Bulgaria, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen insisted: "Gadhafi's reign of terror is coming to an end.
"He is increasingly isolated at home and abroad. Even those closest to him are departing, defecting or deserting ... It is time for Gadhafi to go as well," Rasmussen said.
In Rome, Libyan General Salah Giuma Yahmed said the ongoing defections meant Gadhafi's forces could no longer prop up the regime.
"NATO forces are paralyzing Gadhafi's troops, they are now running at about 20 percent of their military capacity," he told reporters.
In a statement ahead of Zuma's visit, his ruling African National Congress slammed the NATO raids.
"We also join the continent and all peace loving people of the world in condemning the continuing aerial bombardments of Libya by Western forces," it said after a two-day meeting of its executive council.
The Libyan regime also got support from two French lawyers who planned to initiate legal proceedings against French President Nicolas Sarkozy for crimes against humanity over the Libya campaign.
Libyan justice ministry official Ibrahim Boukhzam told reporters in Tripoli that Jacques Verges and Roland Dumas had offered to represent families he said were victims of the NATO bombs.
The regime's response to the rebellion, however, was condemned in Geneva by U.N. rights chief Navi Pillay.
"The brutality and magnitude of measures taken by the governments in Libya and now Syria have been particularly shocking in their outright disregard for basic human rights," Pillay told the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who heads the rebels' provisional government, welcomed a Friday call by G8 world powers for Gadhafi to stand down, saying it was the position reflective of the "will of the international community as well as the demands and aspirations of the Libyan people."
The Libyan regime responded by saying that only an African Union initiative to resolve the crisis matters to them.
The rebels reiterated they would accept no settlement that did not entail Gadhafi's departure.
On the humanitarian front, announcing 10 million euros ($14 million) in aid for refugees, the European Commission said on Monday about 40,000 Chadian workers trying to flee Libya were stranded in "dire conditions" at the border with Chad.
Qatar, meanwhile, has opened a government-financed refugee camp in southern Tunisia to host 1,600 Libyan refugees, a camp official said Monday.
Source: Agence France Presse
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