Elders in Bani Walid abolish government-appointed military council and appoint own representatives following gun battle
Negotiations were going on in the Libyan town of Bani Walid on Tuesday, a day after fighters seized control from the militias loyal to the country's provisional government.
Elders in Bani Walid said they were appointing their own local government and rejected any interference from the authorities in the capital, Tripoli. On Monday, the fighters had driven out militias loyal to Libya's ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) in a bloody gun battle, with at least four people reported dead.
The elders denied claims that they were loyal to Gaddafi, who was captured and killed in October after weeks on the run.
There were no signs on Tuesday of Gaddafi-era green flags, which witnesses earlier said had been hoisted over the town.
Libya's interior minister, Fawzi Abdelali, insisted the battle was between tribal militias rather than a pro-Gaddafi uprising. "The information we have says that there are internal problems between the people of this city and this is the reason for what happened," he said.
About 200 elders, who gathered in a mosque , decided to abolish an NTC-appointed military council for the town and appoint their own local council, in direct defiance of the authority of the government in Tripoli.
"If [the NTC chief, Mustafa] Abdel Jalil is going to force anyone on us, we won't accept that by any means," one of the elders, Ali Zargoun, told Reuters.
Accounts from Bani Walid, which is about 200km (120 miles) from Tripoli, late on Monday, described armed Gaddafi supporters attacking the barracks of the pro-government militia in the town and then forcing them to retreat.
A fighter with the routed pro-government militia had claimed the loyalists were flying "brand new green flags" from the centre of town. The flags were symbols of Gaddafi's 42-year dictatorship.
But elders on Tuesday disputed that account.
"In the Libyan revolution, we have all become brothers. We will not be an obstacle to progress," said another elder, Miftah Jubarra. "Regarding allegations of pro-Gaddafi elements in Bani Walid, this is not true. This is the media. You will go around the city and find no green flags or pictures of Gaddafi."
British diplomats characterised the skirmish as a "localised issue" between different factions, rather than a resurgence by pro-Gaddafi forces. They said the dispute had been simmering for several weeks and erupted when locals tried to replace the NTC-appointed leader of the town's revolutionary council with their own representative. The situation was now calm with negotiations going on, they added.
Dave Hartwell, a Middle East analyst with IHS Jane's, said he was still "broadly optimistic" about Libya's future, despite the NTC's failure to assert its political authority.
He said it was premature to predict Iraq-style conflagration for Libya, or interpret the latest clashes as the beginnings of a nascent civil war.
"It's de rigeur at the moment for rival groups to accuse each other of being loyalists. Whenever you have a local dispute one side will accuse the other of being pro-Gaddafi. It's indicative of the wider problem that the government is having in establishing law and order and the perception that the government doesn't control the whole of the country."
He added, however: "Libya doesn't have the problems Iraq experienced in 2003 with things like infrastructure. Despite its political failures the NTC has been able to keep society functioning."
The NTC is due to announce soon a plan which, in theory, will see elections take place later this year for a new assembly. The assembly will then draft Libya's new constitution, with a referendum and new parliamentary and presidential elections to follow in 2013.
Bani Walid, the base of the powerful Warfallah tribe, was one of the last towns to surrender to the anti-Gaddafi rebellion last year. During Libya's nine-month war, anti-Gaddafi NTC rebels tried to take Bani Walid but did not progress much beyond the outskirts of the town. It later emerged that Saif al-Islam, one of Muammar Gaddafi's sons who was captured in the Sahara desert in November, had been using Bani Walid as a base.
Shortly before the end of the conflict, with Gaddafi's defeat unavoidable, local tribal elders negotiated an agreement under which forces loyal to the NTC were able to enter the town without a fight. Relations have been uneasy since then and there have been occasional flare-ups of violence.
A local resident, who did not want to be identified, said Monday's violence began when members of the 28 May militia, affiliated to the NTC, arrested some former Gaddafi loyalists. That prompted other supporters of the former leader to attack the militia's garrison. "They massacred men at the doors of the militia headquarters," said the resident, according to Reuters.