THE INTERNATIONAL Contact Group meeting in Rome yesterday agreed to make $250 million (€172 million) available immediately to Libyan rebel groups while the two Arab countries Qatar and Kuwait will be making a further $580 million available in the near future.
Speaking after a meeting attended by France, Italy, the Netherlands, Qatar, Kuwait, the UK and the US as well as by representatives of Nato and the Benghazi-based Libyan Transitional National Council, Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini confirmed that the meeting would make the money available for “humanitarian purposes”.
After the meeting the council’s acting prime minister Mahmoud Jabril told reporters that he was very satisfied with the outcome.
Asked just what his temporary government would do with the money, he said that it was required not for arms but rather for a vast range of social services – health, education, housing – necessary to put in place as part of the “road map” for a post-Gadafy Libya.
British foreign minister William Hague confirmed the Libyan rebel leader’s interpretation of the day’s meeting, saying: “This money will help them to keep basic services going . . . because in the east of Libya they still need to be educating people, to keep public services moving and they have to meet the expenses of all that and they don’t have much tax revenue at the moment.”
Responding to Turkish suggestions that the Libyan conflict might end within a matter of days, Mr Jabril said it was impossible to establish a timetable.
The end of the “freedom fight” might come in “days, or weeks, or months”, he said, saying that this depended entirely on just when Libyan leader Col Muammar Gadafy decided to accept the “democratic wishes of his people” and step down.
Asked about the extent to which the international community is willing to acknowledge his temporary executive as a legitimate interlocutor, Mr Jabril said that the fact that Nato and all the other Contact Group countries were willing to sit down around the table with the transitional council was “recognition in itself”.
The “road map” he had outlined to the group had met with widespread approval, he added.
Fundamental to the road map is a three-phase programme which would involve the holding of a national constituent assembly to draw up a constitution prior to political and presidential elections.
Delegates for the constituent assembly would be chosen on a pro-capita proportional basis, calculated on a survey of every Libyan city, town and village. For the time being, nothing has been excluded by way of constitutional proposals but in the end, “the Libyan people will decide”.
While this inevitably slow process was being enacted, he envisaged Libya being ruled by an interim government that would include army and police officers, those not too closely identified with the Gadafy regime, as well as at least one supreme court judge and possibly former members of the Gadafy government, who have since broken with the Libyan leader.
Yesterday’s Contact Group meeting was the third such meeting, following previous gatherings in Doha and London. The group is due to meet in June in the United Arab Emirates.