US meets with Qadhafi representatives: official

WASHINGTON: US envoys recently held a rare meeting with representatives of Moamer Qadhafi's regime and urged the Libyan strongman to cede power, a US official said Monday.

The one-off meeting came after the United States and other Western and regional powers on Friday recognized the rebel Transitional National Council as Libya's legitimate authority.

US officials "met with regime representatives to deliver a clear and firm message that the only way to move forward is for Qadhafi to step down," the US official said in Washington on condition of anonymity.

"This was not a negotiation. It was the delivery of a message," the official said.

"We have no plans to meet again, because the message has been delivered," she said.

The official declined to explain details about the meeting. CNN, quoting a spokesman for Qadhafi's regime in Tripoli, said that the talks took place on Saturday in neighboring Tunisia.

Qadhafi, who has ruled Libya for four decades, has been hanging on to power despite rebel advances and four months of NATO-led bombings.

Western and regional powers, in the fourth so-called contact group meeting on Libya, agreed Friday in Istanbul to consider the rebels as the country's legitimate rulers -- a move that gives them access to vital funds.

The US official said that the United States wanted to express major powers' views "directly and unequivocally" in the aftermath of the talks in Istanbul.

"The message was simple and unambiguous and the same message we deliver in public -- Qadhafi must leave power so that a new political process can begin that reflects the will and aspirations of the Libyan people," she said.

The United States and Libya exchanged ambassadors in 2009 after a break of 36 years as the two countries tried to repair relations that had long been clouded by Western suspicions that Qadhafi supported terrorism.

But Qadhafi's relations with the West rapidly deteriorated after he launched an assault on rebels. The US embassy in Tripoli shut operations on February 25 when Washington imposed sanctions and froze the regime's assets.

Libyan rebels have reported advances in recent days and said Monday that they were in control of the refinery town of Brega. But Qadhafi's forces insisted that they had repulsed the assault.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011