In a telephone address relayed to some 100,000 supporters in Tripoli’s Green Square on Friday, Qaddafi urged NATO to halt its bombing campaign or risk seeing Libyan fighters descend on Europe “like a swarm of locusts or bees.”
“Retreat, you have no chance of beating this brave people,” Qaddafi said in his address.
“They can attack your homes, your offices and your families, which will become military targets just as you have transformed our offices, headquarters, houses and children into what you regard as legitimate military targets,” he said.
NATO announced it had stepped up strikes on Qaddafi forces in west Libya including the capital Tripoli, saying it had carried out more than 50 attacks since Monday.
“Instead of issuing threats, Qaddafi should put the well-being and the interests of his own people first and he should step down from power and help facilitate a democratic transition,” Clinton told reporters on a trip to Spain.
Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez said the alliance stance was unchanged.
“Spain’s and the international coalition’s response is to maintain the unity and determination with which we have been working these past months,” she said.
Libyan rebels who had advanced to within 80 km (50 miles) of the capital were stopped in their tracks on Friday by a barrage of rocket fire from government forces, underlining the dogged resistance of Qaddafi troops to a five-month revolt.
“(It) was obviously a strategic withdrawal because of the battlefield situation and the amount of bombardment that the revolutionary forces were receiving,” said rebel spokesman Ahmed Bani. “But we hope to counter that within the next 48 hours.”
Coalition military officials refuse to characterise the situation on the ground as a stalemate after a 104-day bombing campaign that has strained alliance firepower and tested unity, with internal divisions over strategy surfacing.
Analysts say part of NATO’s strategy is to use the attacks to hinder efforts by authorities to put down any future uprising in Tripoli.
Britain’s defense ministry said Apache helicopters hit three tanks and a bunker firing position in an attack on an army camp west of Tripoli late on Friday. Libyan state TV said NATO also bombed the central Al-Jufrah region on Saturday.
A document seen by Reuters showed African Union leaders had agreed on Friday that member states would not execute the arrest warrant for Qaddafi, leaving open the possibility that he could go into exile in one of the African Union’s 53 nations.
The grouping also offered to host talks on a cease-fire and a transition to democratic government, but did not call on Qaddafi to step down and left open whether he had a future role.
“We understood that the spirit of the document is that Qaddafi will not have a role to play in the future of Libya,” Mansour Sayf al Nasr, the rebel’s representative for France, told reporters at the summit in Equatorial Guinea.
In Tripoli, government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim did not comment on whether any AU-hosted negotiations should start on the assumption that Qaddafi would step down, saying only: “We have been saying for months that we will have talks with all parties.”
