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Don’t call me.
Moammar Khadafy tried to ask Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika for asylum — but the neighboring ruler “refused to take his call,” it was reported yesterday.
Algeria granted sanctuary to the Libyan dictator’s wife and daughter and two of his sons this week. But when Khadafy called, a Boutefika adviser “excused him, saying he was absent and busy with events in Algeria,” the Algerian newspaper El Watan reported, citing a source close to the president.
The source added, “We refuse to get involved in Libya’s internal affairs.”
Meanwhile Khadafy ranted in a new audiotape, urging Libyan tribesman to fight to the death against the rebels who drove him from Tripoli.
“We won’t surrender again. We are not women,” Khadafy said on the tape broadcast by pro-Khadafy Al-Rai TV in Syria. “If Libya burns, who can govern it? So let it burn!”
Several hours later, the station aired a second tape in which Khadafy charged that NATO was trying to occupy Libya to steal its oil.
Khadafy, in hiding, hadn’t been heard from since another tape surfaced last Thursday.
The new rant appeared timed to coincide with yesterday’s 42nd anniversary of Khadafy’s seizure of power in Libya.
In other developments:
* At a Paris summit to meet Libya’s new leaders, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told them the United States is watching closely how they handle the fate of Lockerbie bomber Abdel al-Megrahi, who was freed from a Scottish jail two years ago. “He should be behind bars,” she said.
* Rebel leaders denied a report in the French newspaper Libération that they had agreed in April to grant France 35 percent of future oil deals in return for support in the anti-Khadafy fight.
* UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said world leaders at the Paris summit agreed that the United Nations would take the lead on assisting Libya’s new leadership, and he called for the Security Council to deploy a civilian mission to stabilize the country.
* Witnesses said rebel forces and armed civilians are rounding up thousands of black Libyans and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, accusing them of fighting for Khadafy and holding them in makeshift jails across Tripoli. With AP, Reuters