Libya new rulers win cash boost, face Gaddafi threats

Libya's new leaders won massive international support for their plans to rebuild the war-shattered country but faced threats of a long guerrilla war from defeated strongman Muammar Gaddafi today.

"Prepare yourselves for a gang and guerrilla war, for urban warfare and popular resistance in every town... to defeat the enemy everywhere," Gaddafi warned from his hideout in one of two audio tapes aired on Arab satellite television.
Boosted by promises of billions of dollars in cash from unfrozen assets of the Gaddafi regime, the National Transitional Council prepared to put into practice a road map for bringing democracy to Libya.
A body tasked with drafting a constitution should be elected within eight months and a president within 20 months, the NTC's representative in Britain, Guma al-Gamaty, told the BBC today.
He said the process of transition was already under way and the NTC would move properly to Tripoli from its original base in Benghazi within a few days.
For the first eight months the NTC would lead Libya, during which a council of about 200 people should have been directly elected, Gamaty said, referring to plans drawn up in March and refined last month.
"This council... will take over and oversee the drafting of a democratic constitution, that should be debated and then brought to a referendum," he said.
Within a year of the council being installed, final parliamentary and presidential elections should be held.
Interim interior and security minister Ahmed Darrad said in Tripoli today that fighters from elsewhere who had helped to liberate the capital should now go back 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 represents a first effort to defuse possible tensions between Tripoli's freshly-emerged revolutionaries and the scores of hardened fighters who poured in from other towns to topple Gaddafi's regime.
"We are grateful for the work of brigades from Misrata, Zintan and elsewhere, but as soon as we finish organising our own ranks they should go and rest." Abdullah Naqir, head of the newly formed military council of Tripoli, said.
Senior envoys from more than 60 countries met the leaders of the NTC in Paris yesterday to endorse the fledgling new regime and offer practical support.