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and will formally recognise the rebel-led National Transitional Council as the Libyan governmental authority.
“The prime minister and I have decided that the UK recognises and will deal with the National Transitional Council as the sole governmental authority in Libya,” Hague told a news conference.
“We are inviting the National Transitional Council to appoint a new Libyan diplomatic envoy to take over the Libyan embassy in London,” he said.
The Foreign Secretary also said Britain had decided to unfreeze assets worth £91 million (US$148 million) belonging to a Libyan oil company now controlled by the NTC.
Hague said earlier that Britain was ready to allow Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to live out his days in Libya as long as he no longer held power.
“What happens to Gaddafi is ultimately a question for the Libyan people.
“It’s for the Libyan people to determine their own future. Whatever happens, Gaddafi must leave power. He must never again be able to threaten the lives of Libyan civilians,” he said.
The British Foreign Ministry has summoned the Libyan charge d’affaires earlier yesterday and asked all Libyan diplomats to leave Britain.
The representatives of the Libyan National Transitional Council in London will take over the Libyan embassy.
Britain had already expelled the Libyan ambassador and two Libyan diplomats in May.
Meanwhile Reuters reports from Tripoli that, the former Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing over Scotland made a rare public appearance on Tuesday at a rally in support of Colonel Gaddafi.
Libyan state television showed Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who returned to Libya in 2009 after being freed from a Scottish jail on the grounds he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer, wearing traditional local garb and sitting in a wheelchair at a tribal meeting in Tripoli.
Such meetings have been common as Gaddafi rallies support while rebels push on with their campaign to end his 41-year-rule.
Megrahi was convicted in 2001 of playing a “significant part in planning and perpetrating” the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in which 270 people were killed.
He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum jail term of 27 years.
His release angered the United States, and his return to a hero’s welcome in Libya was an embarrassment to the British government. Megrahi’s survival has raised US questions about the medical advice that led to his being freed. – Xinhua-Reuters.
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