Gadhafi said to accept 'road map' to peace

BENGHAZI, Libya, April 11 (UPI) -- Libya's rebels will carefully consider a proposed "road map" to peace that leader Moammar Gadhafi said he would accept, an opposition official said.

The opposition National Transitional Council, formed by anti-Gadhafi rebels to represent Libya, was to receive the proposal during a Monday meeting with a delegation from the 53-nation African Union in the Benghazi rebel stronghold.

The movement on the diplomatic front came as fighting between the rebels and pro-Gadhafi forces battled through the weekend. NATO said Sunday it destroyed 26 government tanks near Misurata, 130 miles east of Tripoli, and key front-line city Ajdabiya, 100 miles south of Benghazi, whose control has changed hands several times in recent weeks.

The proposed peace plan -- which delegation leader South African President Jacob Zuma said was worked out with Gadhafi at his Bab al-Azizia military barracks and compound outside Tripoli Sunday -- calls for an "immediate" cease-fire, opening of channels for "diligent conveying of humanitarian aid," "the protection of foreign nationals" and "dialogue between the Libyan parties," Zuma said.

It also included a proposal for the "deployment of an effective monitoring mechanism for cease-fire," a statement from the delegation said. The statement did not say who would do the monitoring.

The plan also calls for the adoption and implementation of a "transitional period" toward political reforms that meet the Libyan people's "legitimate aspirations" for democracy, justice, security, peace and socioeconomic development, AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni told the BBC in an interview from Ethiopia.

Asked if the plan requires Gadhafi's departure from Libya, AU Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamamra said: "We agreed that the future leadership of the country should be left up to the Libyan people. It is not up to outside forces," Britain's Sky News reported.

Opposition leaders have said they will accept nothing less than an end to Gadhafi's rule, while Libyan officials insist he will not step down.

Since the conflict began, Gadhafi has ignored his own cease-fires, including one he announced immediately after the United Nations authorized a no-fly zone over Libya.

"The brother leader delegation [of Gadhafi] has accepted the road map as presented by us," Zuma said. "We have to give cease-fire a chance."

The African Union -- which Gadhafi headed in 2009 and 2010 and is reported to have helped transform using Libya's oil wealth -- called on NATO "to cease the bombings to allow and to give a cease-fire a chance," Zuma said.

Two countries in the five-country AU delegation -- Mali and Mauritania -- are among the African countries that receive aid from the Gadhafi government, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The wife of Mali's ambassador chanted "God, Moammar, Libya" with hundreds of Gadhafi supporters bused to a Tripoli military airport as the AU delegation arrived, the Journal said.

Guma al-Gamaty, Britain's National Transitional Council representative, told the BBC the council would look carefully at the AU plan, but said any deal designed to keep Gadhafi or his sons in place would be unacceptable.