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Anti-Gaddafi fighters celebrate at a checkpoint between Tarhouna and Bani Walid yesterday during talks between Libya’s National Transitional Council negotiators and tribal elders from Bani Walid |
The US said it believed the convoy was carrying senior members of Gaddafi’s entourage but not the fallen leader himself.
The Libyan rebels who overthrew Gaddafi two weeks ago said they also thought about a dozen other vehicles that crossed the remote border may have carried gold and cash apparently looted from a branch of Libya’s central bank in Gaddafi’s home town.
Details of the developments were very sketchy.
The military sources said a convoy of between 200 and 250 vehicles was escorted to the northern city of Agadez by the army of Niger, a poor and landlocked former French colony. It might, said a French military source, be joined by Gaddafi en route to adjacent Burkina Faso, which has offered him asylum.
A spokesman for Gaddafi said, however, that he was still in Libya. “He is safe, he is very healthy, in high morale. He thinks very much that he is doing exactly what he should be doing,” Moussa Ibrahim said by telephone.
He did not say where Gaddafi was or when he might next appear in public. He also said he had “no idea” about the reported convoy of military vehicles, saying only that it was normal for groups of travellers to cross the border.
France, Niger and Burkina Faso, as well as Libya’s new rulers and Nato, all denied knowing where Gaddafi was or of any deal to let him go abroad or find refuge from Libyans and the International Criminal Court who want to put him on trial.
French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said it was for Libyans to decide the venue but that Gaddafi must not slip away quietly. “He will have to face justice for all the crimes he has committed in the past 42 years,” he said.
In Washington, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said Gaddafi was on the run and that he had no information as to where he might be.
A French military source said 69-year-old Gaddafi and his son and heir Saif al-Islam might join the convoy later to head for Burkina Faso.
France has taken a lead in the Nato action backing Libya’s uprising and, with its Western allies, would be likely to have the ability to track any sizeable convoy in the empty quarter.
But Niger’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Adani Illo, said such surveillance over thousands of kilometres of desert was still hard. “The desert zone is vast and the frontier is porous,” he said. “If a convoy of 200 to 250 vehicles went through, it is like a drop of water in an ocean.”
Sources close to Niger’s government said the head of Gaddafi’s security brigade, Mansour Dhao, was in the capital Niamey. He was allowed in to the country earlier in the week.
Gaddafi has broadcast defiant messages since he was forced into hiding two weeks ago, and has vowed to die fighting on his own soil. But he also has long friendships with his poor African neighbours, with which he shared some of Libya’s oil wealth.
The sources said the convoy, probably including officers from army units based in the south of Libya, may have looped through Algeria rather than cross the Libya-Niger frontier. Algeria last week took in Gaddafi’s wife, daughter and two other sons, angering the interim council now ruling Libya.
Nato warplanes and spy satellites have been scouring Libya’s deserts for months, raising the likelihood that any convoy of the size mentioned would have been spotted. But a spokesman for the Western alliance said it was not hunting Gaddafi and had a UN mandate only to stop his forces attacking civilians.
“Our mission is to protect the civilian population in Libya, not to track and target thousands of fleeing former regime leaders, mercenaries, military commanders and internally displaced people,” Colonel Roland Lavoie said in a statement.
Tuareg nomads living in the Sahara say those fleeing Libya include many black Africans, some of whom may have been fighters for Gaddafi and most of whom fear the anger and reprisals of Gaddafi’s enemies among Libya’s Arabs.
NTC commanders last week said both Gaddafi and Saif al-Islam were in the tribal stronghold of Bani Walid, 150km south of Tripoli. But that belief has evaporated this week after days of blockade of the town.
Near Sirte, Gaddafi’s home town on the Mediterranean coast, there was the first sign of heavy fighting for some days. Combatants reported exchanges of shell fire and rockets to the east.