Gaddafi is ready for election, says Ortega
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China Daily via Agencies, August 5, 2011
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is ready to hold elections to resolve the ongoing conflict in the North African country, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said late on Wednesday after meeting a Libyan delegation.
Ortega, a personal friend of Gaddafi, said that the leftist Latin American bloc ALBA supported the move to allow Libyans to "exercise their right to vote ... and create the conditions needed to end the war".
The Nicaraguan leader, who called for an end to the bombing campaign, said the Libyan delegation had arrived in Managua on Tuesday bringing a letter for him from Gaddafi.
Members of Gaddafi's inner circle have made proposals for democratic elections in recent months but have been dismissed by international forces including the United States.
In June a US State Department spokeswoman said the notion was "a little late" and that Gaddafi's "days are numbered", after the Libyan leader's son Seif al-Islam proposed an internationally supervised vote. NATO also called the proposal a "cynical PR ploy".
Meanwhile, France will bring home its Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier from its Libyan mission next week for maintenance, Defense Minister Gerard Longuet told the regional daily Var-Matin in an interview published on Thursday.
France will move its Rafale fighter jets from the carrier, moored off the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, to NATO's base in Sicily for the time being. Longuet did not say if the Charles de Gaulle would be sent back after maintenance.
"We are in a situation of redeployment of our resources in order to support the NATO mission until the end," Longuet said.
The carrier, deployed since March in the NATO-led Libya operation and at sea for many months before that, will stay in operation until at least Aug 10 and dock at the Mediterranean port of Toulon before Aug 15 for technical checks and to rest its personnel.
Longuet, who spoke to the paper while visiting a naval base on the Mediterranean coast this week, said there would be no easing off of France's part in the military operation, where it has taken a driving role since the start.
The February 17 Coalition -whose members kick-started the revolt against Gaddafi - said the rebel ministers of defense and international affairs must be sacked following last week's murder of General Abdel Fatah Younes.
Abdulsalam el-Musmari, a judge who heads the coalition, criticized the events leading up to Younes' murder and the handling of its aftermath by the rebels' governing National Transitional Council (NTC).
The facts surrounding the general's death have been opaque, with senior members of the NTC giving incomplete and contradictory accounts of how he died, who killed him and the motive for the murder.
"We have two main demands," Musmari said. "The resignations of the 'defense minister' (Jallal al-Digheily) and his deputy and for all the armed groups to fall under the national army or lay down their weapons."
In a separate written statement, the February 17 Coalition also demanded the sacking of Ali Alasawi - the NTC's minister for international affairs - and a probe into why he approved a warrant for Younes' arrest.
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