Libya new rulers win cash boost, face Kadhafi threats

"Prepare yourselves for a gang and guerrilla war, for urban warfare and popular resistance in every town... to defeat the enemy everywhere," Kadhafi warned from his hideout in one of two audio tapes aired on Arab satellite television.

Boosted by promises of billions of dollars in cash from unfrozen assets of the Kadhafi regime, the National Transitional Council prepared to put into practice a road map for bringing democracy to Libya.

A body tasked with drafting a constitution should be elected within eight months and a president within 20 months, the NTC\'s representative in Britain, Guma al-Gamaty, told the BBC on Friday.

He said the process of transition was already under way and the NTC would move properly to Tripoli from its original base in Benghazi within a few days.

For the first eight months the NTC would lead Libya, during which a council of about 200 people should have been directly elected, Gamaty said, referring to plans drawn up in March and refined last month.

"This council... will take over and oversee the drafting of a democratic constitution, that should be debated and then brought to a referendum," he said.

Within a year of the council being installed, final parliamentary and presidential elections should be held.

Interim interior and security minister Ahmed Darrad said Friday from Tripoli, that fighters from elsewhere who had helped to liberate the capital should now go back home.

"Starting Saturday there will be a large number of security personnel and policemen who will go back to work," he told AFP.

"Now the revolutionaries of Tripoli are able to protect their own city."

The demand represents a first effort to defuse possible tensions between Tripoli\'s freshly-emerged revolutionaries and the scores of hardened fighters who poured in from other towns to topple Kadhafi\'s regime.

"We are grateful for the work of brigades from Misrata, Zintan and elsewhere, but as soon as we finish organising our own ranks they should go and rest." Abdullah Naqir, head of the newly formed military council of Tripoli, said.

Senior envoys from more than 60 countries met the leaders of the NTC in Paris on Thursday to endorse the fledgling new regime and offer practical support.

Even once sceptical Russia and China and Libya\'s reluctant neighbour Algeria agreed to back the new administration.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the uprising\'s most prominent supporter from the outset, said that around $15 billion had already been unfrozen and more would follow.

Sarkozy and other leaders urged the NTC to begin a "process of reconciliation and forgiveness."

NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil said Libyans "proved their courage and their determination" in their fight to topple Kadhafi, but he also pleaded for stability.

"Now everything is in your hands," he told the Libyan people. "It\'s up to you to accomplish what we promised: stability, peace and reconciliation."

Kadhafi, however, was having nothing of it.

"If they want a long battle, let it be long. If Libya burns, who will be able to govern it? Let it burn," he said in the first of his two statements broadcast on friendly television channels 42 years to the day since he toppled the monarchy and seized power.

"The aim is to kill the enemy wherever he may be, whether he be Libyan or foreign," he said in a relatively calm tone in his second message.

"Kadhafi\'s speech is a sign of misery and despair," Darrad retorted.

His foes say Kadhafi and his son Seif al-Islam may be in Bani Walid, southeast of the capital and still held by loyalist troops, where some clashes have taken place.

But the NTC has put its assault on the centres still held by pro-Kadhafi forces, in particular his hometown of Sirte, on hold until September 10 to try to negotiate a peaceful end to the six-and-a-half month conflict.

East and west of Sirte, the attackers have halted their advance while talks with tribal leaders go on, but at the same time they are preparing for an assault.

An AFP correspondent in Qum Qandil, west of Sirte, where reinforcements have been pouring in, saw fighters carefully checking their heavy machine-guns and rifles and loading shells into clips ready for use.

Tanks, mortars and heavy artillery have also been deployed among the sand dunes behind the front line, ready for an opening barrage.

At the Paris conference, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance would continue its six-month operation in Libya for as long as the civilian population was in danger.

NATO said Friday that on the previous day it had struck command and control and munitions storage facilities round Sirte, along with anti-aircraft missile sites and military vehicles.

Its planes also attacked at Bani Walid and at Waddan -- 230 kilometres south of Sirte on the road to another pro-Kadhafi stronghold, Sabha -- where anti-aircraft systems were hit.

© Copyright AFP Agence France-Presse GmbH - All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or distributed. All reproduction or redistribution is expressly forbidden without the prior written agreement of AFP.