@feb17libyaFeb17Libya
Libya Allying With Islamists, Qaddafi Son Says http://bit.ly/mTW5UD #libya
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
After six months battling a rebellion his family portrayed as an Islamist conspiracy, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s son and one-time heir apparent said Wednesday that he was reversing course to forge a secret alliance with radical Islamist elements among the Libyan rebels to drive out their more liberal-minded confederates.
After six months battling a rebellion his family portrayed as an Islamist conspiracy, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s son and one-time heir apparent said Wednesday that he was reversing course to forge a secret alliance with radical Islamist elements among the Libyan rebels to drive out their more liberal-minded confederates.
“The liberals will escape or be killed,” the son, Seif el-Islam el-Qaddafi, vowed in an hour-long interview that stretched past midnight. “We will do it together,” he added, wearing a newly grown beard and fingering Islamic prayer beads as he reclined on a love seat in a spare office tucked in a nearly deserted downtown hotel. “Libya will look like Saudi Arabia, like Iran. So what?”
“The liberals will escape or be killed,” Seif el-Islam el-Qaddafi said in an interview in Tripoli on Wednesday. (NYT)
The leading Islamist Mr. Qaddafi identified as his main counterpart in the talks, Ali Sallabi, acknowledged their conversations but dismissed any suggestion of an alliance. He said the Libyan Islamists supported the rebel leaders’ calls for a pluralistic democracy without the Qaddafis.
But the interview nonetheless offered a rare glimpse into the defiant, some say delusional, mindset of the Qaddafi family at a time when they have all but completely retreated from public view under the threat of a NATO bombing campaign now five months old and a six-month-old rebellion.
