Gaddafi’s regime faces NATO strikes

threats of prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
Rebels fighting to topple Muammar Gaddafi’s regime by contrast were growing in confidence and laid claim yesterday to being able to represent Libya at the June 8 meeting of oil cartel OPEC in Vienna.
“We want to attend, and will study the legal procedure,” Mahmud Shammam, media spokesman for the rebels’ National Transitional Council (NTC), told AFP in Dubai.
“We still do not know if OPEC will invite us,” he said.
Oil Minister Shukri Ghanem – a veteran of Gaddafi’s regime – at the weekend crossed from Libya into neighbouring Tunisia, a Tunisian official said, although there has been no confirmation he has broken ranks and defected.
Ghanem, also chairman of Libya’s national oil company, had been due to attend the Vienna meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries on behalf of the regime but he has made no comment since he left Libya and his whereabouts are not clear.
Shammam said he believed the minister was in fact already in the Austrian capital.
“We have got confirmation from several sources that Shukri Ghanem is in his house in Vienna,” he said.
“He has not been in touch with the NTC, and the council is not interested, nor in need for Mr Ghanem, but we welcome defection by any official,” he added.
If the defection is confirmed, Ghanem would be among the most senior officials to abandon Gadaffi’s government since an uprising erupted in mid-February. – AFP.