Rebels Extend Deadline as Qaddafi Says He'll Resist

The extension of the deadline was an attempt to avoid a bloody confrontation that could impede the hoped-for reconciliation of the divided country. Rebel leaders have said that they are negotiating with tribal elders within Surt to try to broker a peaceful handover of the city, and Abdel Hafidh Ghoga, deputy chairman of the rebels’ leadership council, told The Associated Press that the deadline had been extended because “there are good indications that things are moving in the right direction.”
But the rebels also know that Surt had proved insurmountable for their fighters even before they were stretched thin guarding Tripoli to the west.
Colonel Qaddafi, meanwhile, marked the anniversary of his 1969 coup with two audio messages, released over Arabic language television networks, that seemed both to bait the rebels and to flout reality. Rambling, disjointed and defiant to the point of delusion, his messages almost dared the rebels to find him. He not only declared his tribal hometown to be the new capital but also insisted that the committees of his government were now meeting there.
They were his first messages in more than a week on the run, though on Wednesday his son Seif al-Islam issued a similarly defiant message and his son Saadi released a more conciliatory one.
Usually imperious, Colonel Qaddafi now sounded like an underground insurgent, a Libyan Che Guevara. He implored his supporters to flight on, calling for “guerrilla warfare” and “urban fighting” that would leave the country “engulfed by flames.”
“We will fight the collaborators,” he said. “The Libyan people are not a herd of sheep. They are heavily armed.” And he vowed to outlast NATO powers bombing his country. “Their supplies will run out, but ours will never run out,” he said.
The rebels scoffed at his bravado. “The insurgency will drive him out,” said Ali Sallabi, a prominent Islamist scholar among the revolt’s leaders. “His era has ended for good.”
Internationally, the new government seemed to gain momentum, with more countries — notably Russia and Romania — formally recognizing it as the legitimate authority in Libya, and with an international conference on post-Qaddafi Libyan reconstruction convening in Paris.
Colonel Qaddafi has been a fugitive since the rebels invaded Tripoli late last month in what quickly became a decisive turn in the six-month conflict. He and his subordinates have consistently rejected calls to surrender, but his second wife, along with three of his children and their families, fled to neighboring Algeria on Monday.
Rebel officials said they thought Colonel Qaddafi was hiding in the desert town of Bani Walid, 150 miles southeast of Tripoli. It is the homeland of Libya’s largest tribe, the Warfalla, which has a historic relationship as a patron of his own smaller tribe. In his first speech after the uprising began last February, Colonel Qaddafi specifically called on the Warfalla to help defend him, even though there have been many signs of breaks in the tribe’s allegiance to him over the years.
Aside from Surt and Bani Walid, the third stronghold where he may be hiding is the town of Sabha in southern Libya, another outpost of his tribe.
Members of Colonel Qaddafi’s family passed through Sabha to escape into Algeria. The rebels have demanded that Algeria repatriate the Qaddafi relatives who sought sanctuary there, but there has been no indication that Algeria would do so. An Algerian newspaper, Al Watan, reported that Colonel Qaddafi had also sought asylum in Algeria, but that the president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, refused to take his telephone calls.