Q&A: Top NTC commander Abdel Hakim Belhadj from Tripoli

Abdul Hakim Belhadj, former prisoner of Gaddafi, arrested by the CIA in 2004, is now one of the most powerful men in the new Libya. 

Sitting in a lavish apartment in the wing of a 5-star Tripoli hotel once inhabited by Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif, Abdel Hakim Belhadj looked a bit out of place in his drab, beige and brown military fatigues.

These again, incongruities of this sort are becoming common for the 45-year-old revolutionary who emerged from the darkest of Gaddafi's torture chambers to become the leader of Tripoli's Military Council, and, by some accounts, the most powerful man in the new Libya.

And sharp swings of fate are hardly new for Belhadj, a war-hardened fighter who was born in Tripoli's Souq al-Jumaa district and studied engineering at al-Fateh University.

In the 1980s, he fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets and later returned to Libya to form the former Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which fought a guerrilla war in Libya's hinterlands for three years and allegedly tried to assassinate Gaddafi three times in the mid-1990s.

To escape Gaddafi's wrath, he led a life on the run, spending time in Sudan, Syria, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria and Iran before returning to Afghanistan. According to an arrest warrant issued in 2002, Belhadj forged close ties with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. 

Escaping his base in Jalalabad whenthe US moved into Afghanistan after  September 11, 2001, he was eventually arrested with his wife by the CIA in Bangkok in 2004. He was then extradited to Libya, where he

was imprisoned and tortured in the notorious Abu Salim prison for seven years.

Released in 2010, as part of a plan championed by the same Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Belhadj eventually became the top rebel commander in Libya and was largely credited for masterminding the fall of Tripoli on August 23.

Belhadj spoke to Al Jazeera's David Poort about torture, tragedy and what he plans to say to Muammar Gaddafi.

David Poort: What happened to you after your arrest in 2004? Belhadj: When I was arrested I was first subjected to barbaric treatment at the hands of CIA agents at Bangkok airport. The same treatment was given to my wife, who was pregnant at the time. Later, in Libya, I was subjected to many types of physical and mental torture.

[Appears uncomfortable] Let's not get into the details. DP: Colonel Ahmed Bani said there is a "human tragedy" unfolding in Bani Walid. What is your assessment? Belhadj: We have sent additional weapons and troops to Bani Walid, answering calls from our fighters at the frontline. Our commanders there said they had a shortage of equipment and weapons, so over the past days we have been trying to accommodate their requests.

We've also sent more ambulances and other aid vehicles. Hopefully, this will have a positive effect on the situation so that Bani Walid may be liberated soon. DP: What is the latest from Sirte?

Belhadj: The same goes for the situation in Sirte. People from there are witnessing a very fierce conflict and they are paying a heavy price. Casualty numbers are very high. Even so, the situation in Sirte is better than it is in Bani Walid. DP: Do you know the location of Gaddafi and his sons? Belhadj: We are receiving conflicting reports on this. But the heavy resistance from the remaining Gaddafi troops confirms to me that they are among them. We know there are still a lot of loyalist fighters active in Bani Walid. If we find Gaddafi or his family members we will treat them fairly and give them a fair trial. We will protect their human rights, because that is what this revolution is all about; that is what we have risen up for. DP: Are your troops disciplined enough not to shoot Gaddafi on sight? 

Belhadj: [Joking: I hope they do] This revolution has set high standards regarding the justice system. All accused will be subjected to the same laws, regardless of their status or the crimes they committed. I trust my troops to do the right thing, but also I trust that Gaddafi won't surrender easily. Our troops will deal with him according to military standards, as a soldier. 

However, we believe that he will not let himself be arrested. I think he would rather kill himself. DP: What would you say to Gaddafi if they catch him alive? Belhadj: I would only ask him: "Did you ever expect yourself to be in this position?" [Smiles] DP: There are still neighbourhoods in Tripoli known to be largely loyal to Gaddafi. Are you worried about this? 

Belhadj: Tripoli has been liberated and we have now moved to the second phase, which is securing all neighbourhoods of the capital. This is important because we need people to return to their normal life, to go back to work, and children to go back to school. 

DP: Western countries have voiced concern about Islamist elements within the revolutionary forces. Belhadj: Regarding the Islamist elements among the revolutionaries, I can only say that Libya is an Islamic country and that all our traditions and behaviour is built on Islam. Libyans are generally moderate Muslims, with moderate ways of practice and understandings of religion. You can find some extreme elements that are different from the ainstream, but this does not in any  ay represent the majority of the  Libyan people. I would like to remind you again that the Islamic elements in the revolution are not considered to be a danger to our country or to our neighbours. 

DP: What about your own alleged ties with al-Qaeda? Regarding what people say about ties with al-Qaeda: We have never been in a relationship with them or joined them in any kind of activity, because we could never come to an nderstanding of [philosophies]. 

Even the Western intelligence agencies have found no connection between the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and al-Qaeda. The confusion stems from us being active at the same time and place as them. We never sympathised with them or upported their activities. We were against their ideas and actions. 

DP: What will be your role in the new Libya when the fighting is over? Belhadj: I'll be what the Libyan people will ask me to be. My future role is still to be decided upon in the oming period. I don't care whether my role will be political or military. [Joking: Maybe I could become a journalist.] At this time, we are still fighting a war for liberty that was orced upon us by the previous  government. We did not choose to wear this uniform and carry these weapons. 

Our main challenge is to build our dream, a civilised country where every civilian can get all of his civil rights. To achieve this, we need all Libyan people to participate. We do not know how long this battle will continue but I don't think this will be over by the end of this month. 

How al-Qaeda got to rule in Tripoli

His name is Abdelhakim Belhaj. Some in the Middle East might have, but few in the West and across the world would have heard of him. Time to catch up. Because the story of how an al-Qaeda asset turned out to be the top Libyan military commander in still war-torn Tripoli is bound to shatter - once again - that wilderness of mirrors that is the "war on terror", as well as deeply compromising the carefully constructed propaganda of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) "humanitarian" intervention in Libya. 

Muammar Gaddafi's fortress of Bab-al-Aziziyah was essentially invaded and conquered last week by Belhaj's men - who were at the forefront of a militia of Berbers from the mountains southwest of Tripoli. The militia is the so-called Tripoli Brigade, trained in secret for two months by US Special Forces. This turned out to be the rebels' most effective militia in six months of tribal/civil war.

Already last Tuesday, Belhaj was gloating on how the battle was won, with Gaddafi forces escaping "like rats" (note that's the same metaphor used by Gaddafi himself to designate the rebels). Abdelhakim Belhaj, aka Abu Abdallah al-Sadek, is a Libyan jihadi. Born in May 1966, he honed his skills with the mujahideen in the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. He's the founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and its de facto emir - with Khaled Chrif and Sami Saadi as his deputies. 

After the Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996, the LIFG kept two training camps in Afghanistan; one of them, 30 kilometers north of Kabul - run by Abu Yahya - was strictly for al-Qaeda-linked jihadis. After 9/11, Belhaj moved to Pakistan and also to Iraq, where he befriended none other than ultra-nasty Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - all this before al-Qaeda in Iraq pledged its allegiance to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and turbo-charged its gruesome practices. In Iraq, Libyans happened to be the largest foreign Sunni jihadi contingent, only losing to the Saudis.

Moreover, Libyan jihadis have always been superstars in the top echelons of "historic" al-Qaeda - from Abu Faraj al-Libi (military commander until his arrest in 2005, now lingering as one of 16 high-value detainees in the US detention center at Guantanamo) to Abu al-Laith al-Libi (another military commander, killed in Pakistan in early 2008). Time for an extraordinary rendition The LIFG had been on the US Central Intelligence Agency's radars since 9/11. 

In 2003, Belhaj was finally arrested in Malaysia - and then transferred, extraordinary rendition-style, to a secret Bangkok prison, and duly tortured. In 2004, the Americans decided to send him as a gift to Libyan intelligence - until he was freed by the Gaddafi regime in March 2010, along with other 211 "terrorists", in a public relations coup advertised with great fanfare. The orchestrator was no less than Saif Islam al-Gaddafi - the modernizing/London School of Economics face of the regime. LIFG's leaders - Belhaj and his deputies Chrif and Saadi - issued a 417-page confession dubbed" corrective studies" in which they declared the jihad against Gaddafi over (and illegal), before they were finally set free. A fascinating account of the whole process can be seen in a report called "Combating Terrorism in Libya through Dialogue and Reintegration". [1] Note that the authors, Singapore-based terrorism "experts" who were wined and dined by the regime, express the "deepest appreciation to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation for making this visit possible". 

Crucially, still in 2007, then al-Qaeda's number two, Zawahiri, officially announced the merger between the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM). So, for all practical purposes, since then, LIFG/AQIM have been one and the same - and Belhaj was/is its emir. In 2007, LIFG was calling for a jihad against Gaddafi but also against the US and assorted Western "infidels". Fast forward to last February when, a free man, Belhaj decided to go back into jihad mode and align his forces with the engineered uprising in Cyrenaica. Every intelligence agency in the US, Europe and the Arab world knows where he's coming from. 

He's already made sure in Libya that himself and his militia will only settle for sharia law. There's nothing "pro-democracy" about it - by any stretch of the imagination. And yet such an asset could not be dropped from NATO's war just because he was not very fond of "infidels". The late July killing of rebel military commander General Abdel Fattah Younis - by the rebels themselves - seems to point to Belhaj or at least people very close to him. It's essential to know that Younis - before he defected from the regime - had been in charge of Libya's special forces fiercely fighting the LIFG in Cyrenaica from 1990 to 1995. 

The Transitional National Council (TNC), according to one of its members, Ali Tarhouni, has been spinning Younis was killed by a shady brigade known as Obaida ibn Jarrah (one of the Prophet Mohammed's companions). Yet the brigade now seems to have dissolved into thin air. Shut up or I'll cut your head off Hardly by accident, all the top military rebel commanders are LIFG, from Belhaj in Tripoli to one Ismael as-Salabi in Benghazi and one Abdelhakim al-Assadi in Derna, not to mention a key asset, Ali Salabi, sitting at the core of the TNC. It was Salabi who negotiated with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi the "end" of LIFG's jihad, thus assuring the bright future of these born-again "freedom fighters". It doesn't require a crystal ball to picture the consequences of LIFG/AQIM - having conquered military power and being among the war "winners" - not remotely interested in relinquishing control just to please NATO's whims. 

Meanwhile, amid the fog of war, it's unclear whether Gaddafi is planning to trap the Tripoli brigade in urban warfare; or to force the bulk of rebel militias to enter the huge Warfallah tribal areas. Gaddafi's wife belongs to the Warfallah, Libya's largest tribe, with up to 1 million people and 54 sub-tribes. The inside word in Brussels is that NATO expects Gaddafi to fight for months if not years; thus the Texas George W Bush-style bounty on his head and the desperate return to NATO's plan A, which was always to take him out. Libya may now be facing the specter of a twin-headed guerrilla Hydra; Gaddafi forces against a weak TNC central government and NATO boots on the ground; and the LIFG/AQIM nebula in a jihad against NATO (if they are sidelined from power). Gaddafi may be a dictatorial relic of the past, but you don't monopolize power for four decades for nothing, and without your intelligence services learning a thing or two. 

From the beginning, Gaddafi said this was a foreign- backed/al-Qaeda operation; he was right (although he forgot to say this was above all neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy's war, but that's another story). He also said this was a prelude for a foreign occupation whose target was to privatize and take over Libya's natural resources. He may - again – turn out to be right. The Singapore "experts" who praised the Gaddafi regime's decision to free the LIFG's jihadis qualified it as "a necessary strategy to mitigate the threat posed to Libya". Now, LIFG/AQIM is finally poised to exercise its options as an "indigenous political force". Ten years after 9/11, it's hard not to imagine a certain decomposed skull in the bottom of the Arabian Sea boldly grinning to kingdom come.

Libyan Rebels capture Gaddafi compound in Tripoli

Rebel fighters captured Moammer Gaddafi's heavily fortified Bab al-Aziziya compound and headquarters in Tripoli on Tuesday after a day of fierce fighting, a correspondent witnessed.

The defenders had fled, and there was no immediate word on the whereabouts of Gaddafi or his family after the insurgents breached the defences as part of a massive assault that began in the morning.

"Rebels breached the surrounding cement walls and entered inside. They have taken Bab al-Azizya. Completely. It is finished," the correspondent said.

"It is an incredible sight," he said, adding that the bodies of a number of apparent Gaddafi fighters were lying inside, as well as wounded.

Only minutes earlier, rebel spokesman Colonel Ahmed Omar Bani said from Benghazi: "Our forces are surrounding Bab al-Azizya. There is a fierce battle going on there. We are now controlling one of the gates, the western entrance."

The correspondent said rebels found an armoury in one of the buildings and were seizing quantities of ammunition, pistols and assault rifles.

There was no immediate comment from the rebel leadership in the eastern city of Bengazi, but an official in the western city of Misrata said that "at the same house used by Gaddafi before to describe the Libyan people as rats, today the independence flag flying on its roof."

On Tuesday morning, Gaddafi's son Seif al-Islam, who was reportedly under arrest, made a surprise appearance in Tripoli and announced that his father and family were still in the capital.

However, he declined to say where.
"Gaddafi and the entire family are in Tripoli," Seif told reporters at the Rixos Hotel where many foreign journalists are housed.

Seif also said the regime's forces had deliberately not tried to prevent the rebels from entering the capital.

"Allowing the rebels to enter Tripoli was a trick," he said, without elaborating.
NATO, meanwhile, said Gaddafi was "not a target" for the military alliance.
"NATO does not target individuals," said Operation Unified Protector spokesman, Colonel Roland Lavoie.

"Gaddafi does not constitute a target," he told reporters in Brussels via video-conference from the mission's Naples headquarters.
In the hours that led up to the storming of the compound in central Tripoli, the sound of the fighting was the most intense heard in the city since rebels arrived three days ago.

The correspondent said that rebel forces coming from the western city of Misrata had reinforced the offensive during the afternoon.
The rebel official in Misrata said one of their commanders had been killed in the assault on the compound.

The sky was filled with the sound of heavy and light machine guns as well as mortars, with the overhead roar of NATO jets that had been carrying intensive over flights though it was unclear if there were any air strikes.

Even two kilometres (about a mile) from the fighting, the almost constant whistle of falling bullets could be hear from the rooftops, as the city's mosques chanted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest).

Gaddafi son Saif Al Islam at Tripoli hotel after arrest report

Saif al-Islam, the son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi who rebels and the International Criminal Court said had been arrested, arrived late on Monday at the Tripoli hotel where foreign reporters are staying.

Saif appeared at the Rixos Hotel late at night and spoke to foreign journalists there. Television footage showed him pumping his fists in the air, smiling, waving and shaking hands with supporters, as well as holding

his arms aloft with each hand making the V for victory sign. 

Saif told journalists that Tripoli, which has been largely overrun in the past 24 hours by rebel forces seeking to topple his father, was in fact in government hands and that Muammar Gaddafi was safe. Earlier, armed pro-Gaddafi security mean guarding the hotel took a small group of journalists to Gaddafi's Bab al Aziziyah compound, where they had a meeting with Saif. 

They returned to the hotel accompanied by Saif, who then spoke to journalists in the lobby before taking some of them back to he compound a short distance away for a  brief visit.

Saif said: "I am here to disperse the rumors ...

"This is a war of technology and electronics to cause chaos and terror in Libya. They also brought in armed gangs by sea and by road."

He was referring to a text message sent to mobile phone subscribers in Tripoli on Monday congratulating them on the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. Saif also said that Tripoli was under government control and that he did not care about an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague seeking him and his father for crimes gainst humanity. 

When asked if his father was safe and well in Tripoli, Saif told a journalist: "Of course."

Fighting erupts in Tripoli

<< Supporters of Libyan leader Gaddafi

Fighting erupted in Tripoli late Saturday as rebels closed in on the capital by claiming a third key city in 24 hours and predicted Muammar al-Gaddafi's 42-year-old rule was on its last legs.

Blasts and gunfire rocked Tripoli after the break of the dawn-to-dusk fast of Ramadan and witnesses reported fighting in the eastern neighbourhoods of Soug Jomaa, Arada and Tajura.

As jubilant rebels in newly-conquered towns were champing at the bit for a final push on Tripoli, a government spokesman said the fighting in the capital had not lasted long and the situation been brought under control.

"The situation is under control," Moussa Ibrahim said on television, adding that pro-regime volunteers had repelled insurgents attacks in several neighbourhoods.

Ibrahim dismissed mounting speculation that the regime was on the brink as a "media attack" but more gunfire was heard after he spoke on television.

In his eastern stronghold of Benghazi, Libyan rebel chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil claimed Saturday that victory was within reach, six months after the insurgency was launched.

"We have contacts with people from the inner circle of Gaddafi," said the chairman of the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC). "All evidence (shows) that the end is very near, with God's grace."

Abdel Jalil was speaking to reporters as a flurry of rumours suggested that Gaddafi was preparing to flee Libya.

"I expect a catastrophic end for him and his inner circle, and I expect that he will a create a situation within Tripoli. I hope my expectation is wrong," Abdel Jalil said, before the latest fighting in the capital.

"That would be a good thing that will end the bloodshed and help us avoid material costs. But I do not expect that he will do that," Abdel Jalil added.

Rebels were jubilant after claiming to have captured the strategic eastern oil hub of Brega, a day after saying they had seized Zawiyah and Zliten, two other key towns.
However, rebel Colonel Ahmed Omar Bani said retreating Gaddafi forces were shelling Brega's industrial zone on Saturday and that his men had pulled back to its eastern edge to avoid unnecessary casualties and property damage.

In Sabratah, around 50 kilometres west of Tripoli, rebels were celebrating their camp's latest advances and waiting for a chance to take part in an offensive on the capital.
"I'm dying to go to Tripoli," Mohamed, an 18-year-old fighter from Manchester, said as fighters fired shots in the air and residents stayed to their TV sets, monitoring what they believe are Gaddafi's final hours.

"We have to stay here and await orders. I would like to go right now to Tripoli by boat but I can't because I don't have contact with NATO," said Akram Mohamed Ramadan, another fighter.

While the rebels' pincer movement on the capital intensified, another sign of the regime's fragility came when rebels said former premier Abdessalam Jalloud, who fell out of favour with the Libyan strongman in the mid-1990s but remains a popular figure, had defected and joined their ranks.

Yet both they and the regime downplayed the significance of his departure, after he reportedly flew to Italy from neighbouring Tunisia with his family.

The official JANA news agency simply said "Jalloud had remained away from politics out of his own free will, and spent most of his time abroad for (medical) care for heart disease."

He was among the officers who grabbed power with Gaddafi in 1969 and was long considered the regime's second-in-command before being gradually sidelined in the 1990s.

In Zawiyah, families were fleeing the battle-scarred city in cars and pickups loaded with personal possessions, a day after the rebels claimed it had fallen as they advanced on Tripoli from the west.

Queues of cars hundreds of metres long snaked out of petrol stations after rebels decided to distribute fuel from the nearby refinery for free.

The refinery is the only source of fuel to Tripoli, and could leave it without critical supplies.

At the start of the main road heading south, rebels set up a checkpoint with a list of names of informants whom they accused of having helped Gaddafi's fighters in their now-lost battle for the city.

Insurgents also said they seized Zliten from Gaddafi's forces, hours after saying they were in the town's centre, 150 kilometres (93 miles) east of Tripoli.

Rebels have been seeking to sever Tripoli's supply lines from Tunisia to the west and to Gaddafi's home town of Sirte in the east, hoping to cut off the capital, prompt defections and spark an uprising inside Tripoli.

Meanwhile, a Tunisian defence official said Tunisian troops clashed with a group of armed Libyans overnight in the country's southwest.

An army patrol came under fire from men travelling in several 4X4 vehicles with Libyan registration plates in the Douz region, the official said.

No one was caught and the attackers were still being hunted Saturday by ground and air forces, the official said, adding there were no casualties on the Tunisian side.

With the rebels vowing to take Tripoli before the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan ends in late August, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has urged the population of the capital to rise up against Gaddafi.

"We hope the people of Tripoli... understand the regime has harmed its own people and will therefore join a process of political change to cut off room for manoeuvre for Gaddafi's regime," Frattini said.

Meanwhile, the International Organisation for Migration said it was drawing up plans to evacuate thousands of migrants stranded in Tripoli because exit points have been cut off after a spate of rebel successes.

"There are already thousands of Egyptians who are ready for evacuation now, and what we are hearing is that every day there are more and more requests," IOM spokeswoman Jemini Pandya said.

Gaddafi has plan to blow up capital Tripoli

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has a "suicidal plan" to blow up the capital Tripoli if it is taken by rebels, the Kremlin's special envoy to Libya told a Russian newspaper on Thursday.

"The Libyan premier told me, if the rebels seize the city, we will cover it with missiles and blow it up," Kremlin envoy Mikhail Margelov said in an interview with the Izvestia daily.
Margelov met Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi al-Mahmudi last month. "I imagine that the Gaddafi regime does have such a suicidal plan," he added, saying that Gaddafi still had plentiful supplies of missiles and ammunition.

But Margelov, who has had rare access to senior Libyan officials, questioned reports that Gaddafi could be running out of arms in the drawn-out conflict. Gaddafi had still not used a single surface- to-surface missile, he argued. "Tripoli theoretically could lack ammunition for tanks, cartridges for rifles. But the colonel has got plenty of missiles and explosives."

Margelov met the Libyan prime minister on June 16 in Tripoli after holding talks in Benghazi earlier the same month. He has not met Gaddafi himself. Russia abstained from a vote on a March UN Security Council resolution that opened the way for foreign involvement and has since criticised the campaign -- particularly arms drops by France.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met US secretary of state Hillary Clinton on Wednesday for talks on Libya, where Lavrov sought to play down differences between the countries. However, the Russian foreign ministry said on Wednesday that Moscow would not take part in talks on Libya later this week in Turkey, which has also seen itself as a mediator in the conflict.

Libya: Fierce fighting south-west of Tripoli

<< The rebels on their way to Tripoli

Rebel forces in Libya have clashed with troops loyal to Col Muammar Gaddafi about 80km (50 miles) south-west of the capital, Tripoli.

A rebel spokesman in the Nafusa mountains said there had been heavy fighting on the outskirts of the strategic town of Bir al-Ghanam.

The rebels were making a push for Tripoli. Meanwhile the International Criminal Court is to decide whether to issue an arrest warrant for Col Gaddafi.

A decision by a three-judge panel is expected at 1100 GMT. The ICC's chief prosecutor has also requested arrest warrants for Col Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, and the head of Libyan intelligence, Abdullah Senussi.

The warrants are for alleged crimes against humanity committed against opponents of the regime.

The Nato operation in Libya entered its 100th day on Monday, with the rebels still struggling to take advantage of coalition air strikes on Col Gaddafi's military infrastructure.

The Libyan news agency reported fresh strikes on Tripoli overnight.

The rebels control the east of the country as well as pockets of western Libya, including the Nafusa mountains.

Guma el-Gamaty, a spokesman for the rebels' National Transitional Council (NTC), told AP news agency that Bir al-Ghanam - the focus of the latest fighting - was important as it was barely 30km (18 miles) south of Zawiya, a western gateway to Tripoli.

Opposition fighters seized Zawiya in March before government troops drove the rebels out of the oil-refinery city. Fighting again broke out there this month.

The BBC's Mark Doyle, who is in the village of Bir Ayad near Bir al-Ghanam, says Sunday's fighting began when government forces tried to cut off the rebels by attacking from behind.

Clashes continued in the distance, where the boom of artillery, the rattle of automatic gunfire and the occasional rumble of Nato jets could be heard, he says.

A medic said two rebels had died in the battle. The rebels said government forces suffered far greater casualties, although that cannot be confirmed.

The rebels came down into the plains from the Nafusa mountains in early June, adds our correspondent. But they have met strong resistance from Col Gaddafi's forces.

He says that although it is a shifting front line, the rebels appear to be gradually consolidating their position in the mountains.

The minister of defence for Libya's rebels, Jalal al-Dgheli, told the BBC that because their weapons were so limited, most of them were focused on the push from the western mountains towards Tripoli.

But in the near future there could be an advance from the east near Brega towards Tripoli, he told the BBC's Bridget Kendall in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

"What we're learning from defectors is that Gaddafi's supporters are getting fewer, people who are close to him are abandoning him, and his inner circle is getting smaller by the day."

He added that he hoped Col Gaddafi could be gone by the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in August, but our correspondent said this could be wishful thinking.

'Election proposal'

The Libyan government on Sunday meanwhile reportedly renewed its offer for a vote on whether Col Gaddafi should stay in power.

Gaddafi spokesman Moussa Ibrahim was quoted as telling reporters in Tripoli that the government was proposing a period of national dialogue and an election overseen by the UN and African Union.

A Libyan woman fires at a graduation ceremony after a weapons training course in Tripoli

"If the Libyan people decide Gaddafi should leave he will leave," Mr Ibrahim was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying. "If the people decide he should stay he will stay."

But he said Col Gaddafi - who has run the oil-producing country since a military coup in 1969 - would not go into exile.

The idea of holding an election was first raised earlier this month by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.

Since then Italy has called for a political settlement to the conflict, following a Nato strike in Tripoli on 19 June that killed several civilians.

In a separate development, African leaders meeting in Pretoria said Col Gaddafi has agreed to stay out of talks aimed at ending the conflict.

In a communique after talks on Sunday, the African Union panel on Libya said it welcomed "Col Gaddafi's acceptance of not being part of the negotiations process".