related article ~ Monday, May 30th ~ South Africa's President Zuma is to meet Gaddafi on Monday ...
May 30, 2011
Zuma arrives in Libya on peace mission
The South African president hopes to broker a deal between Moammar Kadafi and the rebels who want to drive him from power. But the Libyan leader has given no indication that he would relinquish power.
Zuma's visit is his second since the conflict began in February. His previous trip made little progress because Gadhafi has refused to end his 41-year-old rule, while rebel leaders say that is a precondition for any truce.
NATO warplanes have been raising the pace of their air strikes on Tripoli, with Gadhafi's Bab al-Aziziyah compound in the center of the city being hit repeatedly.
Journalists escorted into Bab Al-Aziziyah after Zuma's arrival found a group of around 160 African visitors to Libya chanting pro-Gadhafi slogans and waving flags of nations including Chad, Niger and Ghana, in an apparent show of pan-African unity.
Britain said on Sunday it was to add "bunker-busting" bombs to the arsenal its warplanes are using over Libya, a weapon it said would send a message to Gadhafi that it was time to quit.
"Our operation in Libya is achieving its objectives ... We have seriously degraded Gadhafi's ability to kill his own people," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a NATO forum in Varna, Bulgaria.
"Gadhafi's reign of terror is coming to an end," he said.
Gadhafi denies attacking civilians, saying his forces were obliged to act to contain armed criminal gangs and al Qaida militants. He says the NATO intervention is an act of colonial aggression aimed at grabbing Libya's plentiful oil reserves.
read more @ http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-kadafi-web-20110530,0,6519168.story
