Gadhafi shrugs off cease-fire offer: reports

April 2, 2011, 1:03 p.m. EDT
Gadhafi shrugs off cease-fire offer: reports

By Andria Cheng, MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s government rejected the cease-fire offer made earlier Friday by the rebel Interim National Transitional Council, as his forces have been emboldened by a string of victories on the ground, according to media reports.

“If this is not mad, then I do not know what is,” The Wall Street Journal reported, quoting government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim as saying about the cease-fire offer. “We will not leave our cities; we will not stop protecting civilians.”

Ibrahim, during the news conference, also showed footage of women and children being treated at a hospital for shrapnel wounds resulting from coalition air strikes against the village of Bou Argoub near the oil-facilities town of Brega, where fighting has been heavy, the Journal reported, adding that the government’s version of the story couldn’t be independently verified.

Separately, BBC reported that NATO is investigating reports that a NATO warplane enforcing the international policy on Libya attacked a rebel convoy between Brega and Ajdabiya, with at least 15 people reportedly killed about 10miles outside Ajdabiya.

While turning down the cease-fire offer, Gadhafi’s government is also trying to hold talks with the U.S., Britain and France in hopes of ending the air campaign, the Journal reported in a separate article, citing former Libyan Prime Minister Abdul-Ati al-Obeidi.

In another development that has raised concerns among some rebels and their NATO allies, two former members of the Afghan mujahedeen and a six-year detainee at the U.S. “War on Terror” prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have emerged to train and recruit rebel forces in the city of Darna, the Journal reported.

For the U.S., the situation recalls the problems that followed America’s ill-fated alliance with the mujahedeen in a nine-year war that began with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

The U.S. provided financial assistance and weapons to the mujahedeen groups that were fighting Afghanistan’s leftist government and its Soviet military ally. Some of those Islamic fighters went on to join al Qaeda and other violent radical groups. Al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden was a leader of one mujahedeen group.

Andria Cheng is a MarketWatch reporter based in New York.

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