As NATO flies into sunset:

Libyans wonder what dawns ahead

Libya: As NATO ended its Libya mission, alliance chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen mingled in a Tripoli hotel with former rebels and young women yearning for democracy after months of air strikes and street battles.

In an unprecedented visit to the Libyan capital, the scene of daily alliance bombings at the height of the conflict, Rasmussen declared Monday that NATO accomplished its mission to defend civilians from Moamer Kadhafi’s wrath.

“The NATO operation ends at midnight tonight, and for Libya a new dawn will break,” he told scores of young Libyans in the gardens of the Rixos hotel close to the bombed-out compound of the late colonel Kadhafi.

“This is a new day for a new Libya, free, democratic and united. A new Libya based on human rights, rule of law and reconciliation. You are the new Libya, all of you. The future of your country is in your hands,” he said during the first visit to Libya by a NATO secretary general.

His meeting with Libya’s up-and-coming youth groups came moments after talks with interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil and other members of the new leadership, the National Transitional Council (NTC).

Hours later, the NTC elected academic Abdel Rahim al-Kib as prime minister to head a new transitional government. After 42 years of dictatorship, he vowed to make human rights his priority.

Jalil had raised concerns among NATO allies by declaring that the new Libya would be based on a system of Islamic Sharia law. Under a late afternoon sun at the Rixos, young revolutionaries talked democracy and women’s rights, drinking grape and orange juice as they thanked Rasmussen for NATO’s intervention.

“Without you, this could not have been done,” Khaled Balaam, a 36-year-old former fighter from the eastern city of Benghazi, told Rasmussen. “We are greatful for the quick move. You were fast enough to save people,” Balaam, a baby diapers wholesaler by day, said of the air strikes that were launched in March to prevent Kadhafi from crushing the revolt.

Another young man asked whether NATO entertained a request by Jalil to continue the mission until the end of the year, but Rasmussen stressed that its UN mandate had expired and the alliance would play no major role in the new Libya.

NATO, he said, could offer to help reform the defence and security sectors — the former regime’s repressive machinery — if the new leaders request such assistance. But the alliance would not send troops to Libya, he added.

Tripoli, Tuesday, AFP