Nato called an end to its air operation in Libya today as Muammar Gadafy's family demanded a chance to bury his body following his death this week.
In a statement on a Syria-based pro-Gadafy television station, the ousted dictator's family asked for the bodies of Gadafy, his son Mutassim, and others who were killed on Thursday by fighters who overran his hometown Sirte.
"We call on the UN, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and Amnesty International to force the Transitional Council to hand over the martyrs' bodies to our tribe in Sirte and to allow them to perform their burial ceremony in accordance with Islamic customs and rules," the statement said.
At an understated news conference late yesterday, Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance had taken a preliminary decision to call a halt to Operation Unified Protector on October 31st.
Like other Western officials, Mr Rasmussen expressed no regrets in public about the gruesome death of the deposed Libyan dictator, who was captured alive by the forces of the National Transitional Council but was brought dead to a hospital. "We mounted a complex operation with unprecedented speed and conducted it with the greatest of care," Mr Rasmussen said. "I'm very proud of what we have achieved."
The Nato operation, officially intended to protect civilians, effectively ended on Thursday with French warplanes blasting Gadafy's convoy as he and others tried to escape a final stand in Sirte.
Prime minister Mahmoud Jibril said today Libyans should be allowed to vote within eight months to elect a national council that would draft a new constitution and form an interim government.
The current priority was to remove weapons from Libyan streets, restore stability and order and begin a process of national reconciliation, Mr Jibril said at the World Economic Forum in Jordan.
Gadafy was captured wounded but alive hiding in a drain under a road. The world has since seen grainy film of him being roughed up by his captors while he pleads with them.
NTC officials have said Gadafy later died of wounds in the ambulance, but the ambulance driver, Ali Jaghdoun, told Reuters that Gadafy was already dead when he picked up the body. "I didn't try to revive him because he was already dead," he said in testimony that adds greater weight to the widespread assumption that Gadafy was lynched.
The UN human rights arm said an investigation was needed to into whether he was summarily executed. The interim leaders have yet to decide what to do with the corpse.
In Misrata, a local commander, Addul-Salam Eleiwa, showed off the body, torso bare, on a mattress inside a metal-lined cold-store by a market yesterday. There was a bullet hole in his head. "He will get his rights, like any Muslim. His body will be washed and treated with dignity. I expect he will be buried in a Muslim cemetery within 24 hours," he said.
Dozens of people, many with cellphone cameras, filed in to see that he was dead.
"There's something in our hearts we want to get out," said Abdullah al-Suweisi (30), as he waited. "It is the injustice of 40 years. There is hatred inside. We want to see him."
In Tripoli, Gadafy's death prompted a carnival-like celebration, with fireworks, a bouncy castle and candy floss for the children. "Muammar, bad," one small girl said to foreign journalists in English. "Boom boom."
"For some people from outside Libya it could look wrong that we are celebrating a death with our children," said one man with a child on his shoulders. "But it was 42 years with the devil."
Saif al-Islam, Gadafy's son and heir-apparent remains at large, believed by NTC officials to have escaped from besieged Sirte and headed for a southern border.
Without the glue of hatred for Gadafy and his tribe to unite the factions, some fear a descent into the kind of strife that bedevils Iraq after Saddam Hussein. Optimists say that so far Libya's new rulers have quarrelled but not fought.
"Can an inclusive, effective national government be formed? Yes, if factions can avoid fighting," Jon Marks, chairman of Britain's Cross Border Information consultancy said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the NTC had promised to explain how Gadafy was killed. "They're dealing with the death itself as well as the aftermath in as transparent a way as I think they can," he said. "They've fought bravely to liberate their country from this dictator. And, you know, he met an ignominious end yesterday."
One sign of a move towards normalcy was the United Nations Security Council beginning talks on lifting the no-fly-zone imposed by resolution 1973 of March 17th. Envoys expected the flying ban, designed to protect civilians, would be ended after consultations with Libya's new rulers.
Reuters