TRIPOLI: Libya's new rulers are ready to forgive the forces of slain leader Muammar Qadhafi who battled rebels trying to topple his autocratic regime, National Transition Council chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil said on Saturday.
“In Libya we are able to absorb all. Libya is for all,” Abdel Jalil said in Tripoli as he launched a national reconciliation conference organised by the NTC.
“Despite what the army of the oppressor did to our cities and our villages, our brothers who fought against the rebels as the army of Qadhafi and we are ready to forgive them,” he said.
“We are able to forgive and tolerate,” he added.
The conference, the first of its kind since the NTC on October 23 declared the total liberation of Libya, was attended by delegates from the major Libyan tribes and ethnic groups, as well as from Qatar and Tunisia.
Libya's new interim Prime Minister Abdel Rahim al-Kib echoed Abdel Jalil.
“National reconciliation is an essential condition to build the constitutional institutions of a state,” he told the conference.
“The future cannot be built with revenge as a base.”
Kib announced his government on November 22, just a month after the capture and lynching of Kadhafi who ruled the country with an iron fist for 42 years.
A statement issued last month said the new government will help efforts by the NTC “to achieve national reconciliation” in Libya.
It will also strive to rebuild the army and the security forces and promote “the integration of interested citizens into these institutions,” said the statement.
Meanwhile Kib's government is under heavy pressure to disarm hundreds of former rebels who toppled Kadhafi's regime and who are now enforcing security on the streets.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said after the death of Kadhafi on October 20 that for the transitional authorities in Libya “inclusion and pluralism must be the watchwords,” urging all sides to avoid revenge attacks.
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