Kadhafi vows to remain in Libya

TRIPOLI: Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi on Tuesday ordered his forces to crush an uprising that has rocked his 41-year rule, warning armed protesters they will be executed and vowing to fight to his last.

In a defiant, sometimes rambling speech on television, Kadhafi vowed to remain in Libya as head of its revolution, saying he would die as a martyr in the land of his ancestors and fight to the "last drop" of his blood.

Proclaiming the support of the people, Kadhafi ordered the army and police to crush the popular uprising against his iron-fisted four-decade rule that has already left hundreds dead in the past eight days.

He threatened to purge Libya "house by house" and "inch by inch."

In the live, apparently unscripted speech, the 68-year-old former army colonel said, "Moamer Kadhafi is the leader of a revolution; Moamer Kadhafi has no official position in order for him to resign. He is the leader of the revolution forever."

"This is my country, my country," he shouted, in a roughly 75-minute speech consisting of short, angry bursts of words, which he punctuated by shaking his fist or pointing his finger.

Standing against the backdrop of his house, part of which has been deliberately left unprepared since it was bombed by US warplanes in 1986, Kadhafi said he would "die a martyr in the land of my ancestors" and "will fight to the last drop of my blood."

In retaliation for a bomb in a Berlin night club that killed two Americans, then US president Ronald Reagan ordered air strikes on Libyan military facilities, residential areas of Tripoli and Benghazi and Kadhafi's house.

Those attacks killed 101 people, including Kadhafi's adopted daughter.

Apparently addressing today's anti-regime protesters, he asked rhetorically: "When they bombed my house and my children, where were you?"

"You were with America," he answered.

Despite widespread reports that army, police and militias had killed unarmed demonstrators indiscriminately over the past week, Kadhafi said "we have not yet used force."

However, he said "if the situation worsens we will use it in line with international law and Libya's constitution."

"The Libyan people are with me," he said, calling on them to demonstrate from Wednesday. "Capture the rats," he said of anti-regime demonstrators. "Go out of your homes and storm them" wherever they are.

Dressed in a matching light-brown robe, scarf and turban, and wearing glasses, Kadhafi denied that the victims of fighting that has swept the country were young people.

"Those killed were from the police and the army; they were not youths," he said, adding that there was a "small sick group" that "gives drugs to these youths."

He also said that, as of Tuesday night "we will form committees and we will take the drugs from you."

Reading from the country's penal code, he said "any Libyan who carries arms against libyans will be punished by death."

Kadhafi said protesters who had apparently seized control of some cities and towns deserve to be punished in line with Libyan laws "because they took up arms against the nation."

He threatened tough action in line with what he said had been done against insurgents in Moscow and Iraq and freedom protesters in Beijing.

"The Russian president brought tanks and bombed the duma with the MPs inside until they snuffed the rats out, and the West did not object but told him you are acting in accordance with the law.

"Students in Beijing protested for days near a Coca Cola sign ... Then the tanks came and crushed them."

"American bombed Fallujah by air under the pretext that it was fighting terrorism."