Libya’s rebels are planning to send as many as a million barrels of oil a week to Qatar to raise desperately needed funds.
Qatar has agreed to market the crude oil and put the proceeds in an escrow account to avoid breaching UN sanctions, said Ali Tarhouni, who runs finance and economics for the Transitional National Council in Benghazi.
The proceeds will be used to buy food, medicine, fuel and arms, he added, though the purchase of weapons would almost certainly breach the UN weapons embargo on Libya. The deal could garner about $100 million (£62 million) a week.
Government forces recaptured the key oil terminals of Ras Lanuf and Brega this week, but Mr Tarhouni said the rebels still controlled the oilfields of southeastern Libya and could export oil through the port of Tobruk near the Egyptian border. The only remaining problem was to find tankers to transport it.
Mr Tarhouni, a US-based academic who returned to his native Libya after the uprising began, said the provisional council urgently needed to generate revenues because it was spending far beyond its means. “If it wasn’t for the spirit of the people we would have serious problems,” he said.
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Mr Tarhouni was speaking after he and other members of the council met a UN envoy, the former Jordanian minister Abdul Ilah Khatib, who flew into Benghazi with the apparent aim of encouraging a ceasefire.
Council members regarded his arrival as another sign of international recognition, two days after a French ambassador took up his post in Benghazi.
Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the former Justice Minister who now heads the council, told Mr Khatib that the rebels would agree to stop fighting only if Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s forces immediately stopped besieging rebel cities and allowed all Libyans to express themselves freely. “At that point you will see how all the Libyan people want their freedom,” he said, reiterating the rebels’ aim to remove Colonel Gaddafi and reunite Libya with Tripoli as its capital.
Mr Khatib said that he had met senior members of the Gaddafi regime in Tripoli on Thursday and pressed them for a ceasefire, the protection of Libyan civilians and respect for the aspirations of the Libyan people.
“Each side is saying they will agree to a ceasefire if the other party agrees first. The real challenge is how to achieve a ceasefire that is effective, real and lasting,” he said. Mr Khatib will report back to Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, next week.
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Mr Jalil announced that the rebels had invited the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit its prisoners, something the regime has always refused to do, and he proposed a prisoner exchange.
Mr Tarhouni said thousands of rebel fighters and supporters had been abducted or had disappeared over the past six weeks.
Rebels said that Colonel Gaddafi’s forces had stepped up their bombardment of Misrata, Libya’s third city. Fighting also continued around Brega, Libya’s largest oil terminal, which government forces recaptured on Wednesday.