Libyans see Qadhafi as 'irrelevant': US envoy

WASHINGTON: Libyans now see fugitive strongman Moamer Qadhafi as "irrelevant," even if their new leaders know Libya will not be fully liberated until he is captured, a US envoy said Wednesday.

Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, said after visiting Tripoli that he also found the Libyan capital to be "remarkably normal in atmosphere," with stores open and traffic flowing.

"No one knows where Qadhafi is, no one knows how much money he has access to," Feltman told reporters in telephone conference call after meeting civil society representatives and National Transitional Council (NTC) leaders.

However, based on his conversations with civil society, Feltman said "it's almost as if Qadhafi has become irrelevant. It's as if they have moved on, beyond Qadhafi."

"In terms of the people we met today, to the extent that they are representative of the country as a whole, Qadhafi is already part of the past," he added.

However, he acknowledged that the NTC, the country's interim governing authority, "recognizes that you can't declare that the country is fully liberated until Qadhafi is apprehended, until the danger to Libya's civilians ends across the board."

But he added: "Politically, he's already finished."

And while it's "possible for him to be a nuisance and unleash violence in a way, I don't see any possibility, based on what we saw now, of him reversing what the (NTC) and the Libyan people have gained," Feltman said.

US officials said Feltman had left Libya but did not say which country he was speaking from.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011