Oil 'to start flowing' in boost for new Libya

Libya's oil production is to resume soon, a specialist weekly said on Friday after the country's new leaders won wide international support for their plans to bring democratic rule.

But the National Transitional Council (NTC) still faces threats from defeated strongman Muammar Gaddafi, who warned of a lengthy and widespread guerrilla war in messages broadcast from his unknown hideout.

Libya will take time to reach its pre-war oil production level of 1.7-million barrels per day (bpd), but some crude output and refining could resume within days, the Middle East Economic Survey said, quoting local officials.

The Nicosia-based weekly said the southern Murzuq fields and the 120 000 bpd Zawiya refinery could be producing by next week, while the Sarir and Mesla fields will begin pumping around mid-September, reaching 100 000 to 120 000 bpd by October.

An official at the state-run National Oil Company told MEES a 150 000 bpd field which feeds into the Mellitah terminal would also start pumping soon.

MEES said Total's 45 000 bpd offshore Al-Jurf field and Wintershall's NC 96 and 97 fields, which were producing around 80 000 bpd, should also be able to make early starts.

Boosted by promises made at a conference in Paris on Thursday of billions of dollars in cash from unfrozen assets of the Gaddafi regime, the NTC prepared to implement a road map for bringing democracy to Libya.

A body tasked with drafting a constitution should be elected within eight months and a government within 20 months, NTC representative in Britain Guma al-Gamaty told the BBC on Friday.

He said the transition process was already under way and the NTC would move properly to Tripoli from its original base in the eastern city of Benghazi in a few days.

For the first eight months the NTC would lead Libya, during which a council of about 200 people should have been directly elected, Gamaty said, referring to plans drawn up in March and refined last month.

"This council... will take over and oversee the drafting of a democratic constitution, that should be debated and then brought to a referendum," he said.

Within a year of the council being installed, final parliamentary and presidential elections should be held.

Interim interior and security minister Ahmed Darrad said in Tripoli on Friday that fighters from elsewhere who had helped to liberate the capital should now go home.

"Starting Saturday there will be a large number of security personnel and policemen who will go back to work," he told AFP. "Now the revolutionaries of Tripoli are able to protect their own city."

The demand aims at defusing possible tensions between Tripoli's freshly-emerged revolutionaries and the scores of hardened fighters who poured in from other towns to topple Gaddafi’s regime.

"We are grateful for the work of brigades from Misrata, Zintan and elsewhere, but as soon as we finish organising our own ranks they should go and rest." said Abdullah Naqir, head of the newly formed military council of Tripoli.

Senior envoys from more than 60 countries met the leaders of the NTC in Paris to endorse the fledgling new regime and offer practical support.

Even once sceptical Russia and China and Libya's reluctant neighbour Algeria agreed to back the new administration.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the uprising's most prominent supporter from the outset in February, said that around $15-billion had already been unfrozen and more would follow.

Sarkozy and other leaders urged the NTC to begin a "process of reconciliation and forgiveness."

NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil said Libyans had "proved their courage and their determination" in their fight to topple Gaddafi, and it was now up to them to bring about the promised stability, peace and reconciliation.

Gaddafi, however, was having nothing of it.

"Prepare yourselves for a gang and guerrilla war, for urban warfare and popular resistance in every town... to defeat the enemy everywhere," he warned in one of two audio tapes aired on Arab satellite television late on Thursday.

"If they want a long battle, let it be long. If Libya burns, who will be able to govern it? Let it burn," he said on the 42nd anniversary of his coup that toppled the monarchy and seized power.

"The aim is to kill the enemy wherever he may be, whether he be Libyan or foreign," he said.

"Gaddafi’s speech is a sign of misery and despair," Darrad retorted.

His foes say Gaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam may be in Bani Walid, southeast of the capital and still held by loyalist troops, where some clashes have taken place.

But the NTC has put its assault on the centres still controlled by pro-Gaddafi forces, in particular his hometown of Sirte, on hold until September 10 to try to negotiate a peaceful end to the six-and-a-half month conflict.

East and west of Sirte, the attackers have halted their advance while talks with tribal leaders go on, but at the same time they are preparing for an assault.

An AFP correspondent in Qum Qandil, west of Sirte, where reinforcements have been pouring in, saw fighters carefully checking their heavy machine-guns and rifles and loading shells into clips ready for use.

Tanks, mortars and heavy artillery have also been deployed among the sand dunes behind the frontline, ready for an opening barrage, but on Friday all was quiet.

Nato said that Thursday it had struck command and control and munitions storage facilities round Sirte, along with anti-aircraft missile sites and military vehicles.

Its planes also attacked at Bani Walid and Waddan - 230km south of Sirte on the road to another pro-Kadhafi stronghold, Sabha - where anti-aircraft systems were hit, the Western military alliance said.