The Libyan government dismissed rebel denials that the two sides have been holding talks and hit out at NATO's air war as Muammar Gaddafi defiantly vowed the alliance was doomed to defeat.
Addressing a news conference in Tripoli late on Friday, just hours after loud explosions again rocked Tripoli, the prime minister, Baghdadi al-Mahmudi, accused NATO of committing 'war crimes and crimes against humanity' by 'directly targeting civilian sites' with air raids over the past three days.
State television aired Gaddafi's comments in what it said was a live telephone call from the Libyan leader, who has gone underground since the Western-led air war was launched in March, as thousands of his supporters gathered in Tripoli's Green Square for their biggest rally in weeks.
Baghdadi said that the governments of the countries where regime envoys had approached rebel representatives were fully aware that multiple contacts were under way as detailed by Russian envoy Mikhail Margelov.
'Ask the Egyptians, French, Norwegians and Tunisians for information. They will tell you the truth,' Baghdadi said.
'We are sure of our meetings and everything has been recorded.'
Speaking earlier on Friday a day after visiting Tripoli, Margelov said that the Libyan government had forged multiple contacts with the Libyan opposition in foreign capitals including Berlin, Paris and Oslo.
The comments from the Russian envoy, who visited the rebels' eastern stronghold of Benghazi last week, drew a swift denial from their National Transitional Council.
'I can assure you there is and there was no negotiation between the NTC and the regime,' said the council's head of international affairs, Mahmud Jibril.
France said it had no knowledge of any negotiations.
'If there have been direct contacts, we're not involved and we didn't set them up,' foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.
Austria, meanwhile, on Saturday became the latest country to recognise the NTC as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people. In his speech, broadcast by loudspeaker to the flag-waving supporters in Green Square, Gaddafi said the government would not accept any reforms imposed from abroad.
'We are determined to change nothing in our country other than by our own free will... We are resisting, we are fighting,' he said.
'NATO is bound to be defeated.'
The Libyan premier denied allegations being investigated by prosecutors of the International Criminal Court that loyalist forces had been carrying out mass rapes as matter of deliberate policy.
'Neither our morals nor our religion permit it,' Mahmudi said.
He called for 'an urgent meeting' of the United Nations to examine 'crimes committed by NATO against Libyan civilians,' charging that the alliance had hit targets including a university and a hotel in Tripoli on Friday.
In response, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said in a statement that 'the claims made by Gaddafi and members of his regime are outrageous.'
'It is Gaddafi and his regime that have been systematically and brutally attacking the Libyan people.'
Source: New Age
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