A high-profile son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said Wednesday his
family had forged an alliance with Islamist rebels to drive out the secular
opposition to his father's 40-year rule.
Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, who along with his father had long branded the entire
opposition as radical extremists, told The New York Times: "The liberals
will escape or be killed... We will do it together."
"
Libya
will
look like
Saudi Arabia
, like
Iran
. So
what?" he added, in what the Times described as an hour-long interview
that stretched past
midnight
in a
nearly deserted
Tripoli
hotel.
Seif, who had long served as the face of the regime in the West as he appeared
in suits and ties and spoke fluent English, came to the interview sporting a
scraggly beard and traditional dress while fingering prayer beads.
He claimed to have negotiated the pact with Ali Sallabi, a leading Islamist in
the rebel-held east. Sallabi acknowledged their conversations to the Times but
denied the Islamists had switched sides.
The Gadhafi regime has long accused the revolt of being an al Qaeda plot and
has sought to portray itself as a bulwark against an Islamist takeover of the
oil-rich North African country.
The rebels include some Islamists, but insist they are united in wanting to
overthrow Gadhafi and establish a democratic government.
Gadhafi said the Islamists were "the real force on the ground" and
that Western powers would have to come to terms with them.
"I know they are terrorists. They are bloody. They are not nice. But you
have to accept them," he said.
The interview could have been aimed at exploiting recent cracks in the rebels'
ranks following the killing of their top military leader Gen. Abdel Fatah Yunis
in circumstances that remain opaque.
The rebels rounded up more than 60 people with alleged links to Moammar Gadhafi
who are suspected in Yunis's murder following an hours-long gunbattle earlier
this week in the eastern rebel stronghold of
Benghazi
.
Seif repeated the government's contention that Islamists were behind the
killing of Yunis, who was Moammar Gadhafi's right-hand man for decades prior to
his defection earlier this year.
"They decided to get rid of those people--the ex-military people like
Abdel Fatah and the liberals--to take control of the whole operation,"
Seif told the Times. "In other words, to take off the mask."