COL GADDAFI refuses to step down, playing chess instead – Telegraph

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, an eccentric Russian envoy who has claimed to have spoken to aliens, plays chess with Col Gaddafi in Tripoli  Photo: REUTERS TV

Col Gaddafi refuses to step down, playing chess instead

Col Muammar Gaddafi rebuffed the latest international appeal to step down, instead playing chess with the eccentric Russian multi-millionaire envoy sent to convince him that his end was near.
By Nick Meo, Tripoli5:45PM BST 13 Jun 2011

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the Russian head of the World Chess Federation who has claimed to have once visited an alien spaceship, was the latest, and perhaps strangest, international figure to arrive in Tripoli appealing for Gaddafi to go.

Like all the others, however, Mr Ilyumzhinov’s message appeared to fall on deaf ears. Instead the unlikely pair played chess together as the television cameras rolled. Colonel Gaddafi used the occasion to send out a propaganda message of calm, although ordinary Libyans may have felt slightly queasy at seeing their leader sacrificing pawns on the chessboard.

In the clip broadcast on state television, which appeared to have been shot in a government building somewhere in the capital and not in a bunker, Gaddafi appeared unsure how to play the board game. But, dressed all in black and wearing his trademark sunglasses, he did look surprisingly relaxed after four months of uprising, civil war and a Nato onslaught from the air. He is thought to spend his time constantly on the move, driving around Tripoli, and sleeping in hospitals and religious places that Nato would never dare bomb.
via Col Gaddafi refuses to step down, playing chess instead – Telegraph.

Video: NATO Intensifies Airstrikes on Libya The Associated Press

Zuma: Gaddafi “accepts peace roadmap”

Muammar Gaddafi has accepted a roadmap for ending the conflict in Libya, South African President Jacob Zuma said after leading a delegation of African leaders at talks in Tripoli.

Presidents Amadou Toumani Toure of Mali, Jacob Zuma of South Africa, Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania and African Union president Jean Ping stand outside a tent erected at Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya residence in Tripoli 

‘I have some commitment which is compelling me to leave now but we have completed our mission with the brother leader (Gaddafi),’ Mr Zuma said after several hours of talks with the Libyan leader at his Bab al-Aziziyah compound.

‘The brother leader delegation has accepted the roadmap as presented by us. We have to give ceasefire a chance,’ he said, adding that the African delegation would now travel to the eastern city of Benghazi for talks with anti-Gaddafi rebels.

Libyan rebels beat off a new assault by Gaddafi’s forces on the besieged western city of Misrata, losing as many as 30 fighters but helped by more intense NATO air strikes.

As fighting raged on for the coastal town, where conditions are said to be desperate, a buoyant Muammar Gaddafi made his first television appearance for five days and his troops engaged rebels in more fighting on the eastern front of the civil war.

Misrata is the last major rebel outpost in the west of Libya. Gaddafi’s forces appear bent on seizing the city and crucially its port, which some analysts say Gaddafi needs if he is to survive a long conflict.

A rebel spokesman said that fighting centred on a road to Misrata port, where a Red Cross vessel brought in badly needed medical supplies earlier in the day.

The spokesman praised what he called a positive change from NATO, saying its aircraft carried out several air strikes on Gaddafi’s besieging forces.

Rebels have complained for days that NATO is too slow to respond to government attacks.
A government-organised trip to Misrata revealed deserted streets and many heavily shelled buildings in the city’s south.

An official there said a NATO strike hit the outskirts and a warplane could be seen sweeping across the sky.
NATO aircraft hit 15 tanks near Misrata and two south of Brega in the east of the country on Friday and early yesterday, an alliance official said.

NATO’s commander of Libyan operations said the alliance, which took command of air strikes against Gaddafi on 31 March, had destroyed ‘a significant percentage’ of his armoured forces and ammunition stockpiles east of Tripoli in the past 24 hours.

Canadian Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard also accused Gaddafi’s forces of using civilians as human shields.

‘We have observed horrific examples of regime forces deliberately placing their weapons systems close to civilians, their homes and even their places of worship,’ he said in a statement.

In Tripoli, Gaddafi, who was last seen on television on 4 April, was shown smiling and pumping his fists in the air at a school where he was welcomed ecstatically.

Wearing his trademark brown robes and dark glasses, Gaddafi looked confident and relaxed, confirming the impression among analysts that his administration has emerged from a period of paralysis and is hunkering down for a long campaign.

Gaddafi’s military have pushed back a rebel advance in the east, and inconclusive battles have been fought along the desert road between the Mediterranean oil port of Brega and Ajdabiyah, gateway to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, for over a week.

Rebels had said they had intended to take Brega and some had penetrated the outskirts. But their assault seemed to have petered out by nightfall, following a familiar pattern. RTE