Libya's new leaders order provincial fighters out of Tripoli

TRIPOLI: Libya's new leaders have called on fighters from elsewhere in the country to leave the capital and go home, interim interior minister Ahmed Darrad told AFP on Friday.

"Tripoli is free and everyone should leave this town and go back to their own towns," he said.

"Starting Saturday there will be a large number of security personnel and policemen who will go back to work," said Darrad.

"Now the revolutionaries of Tripoli are able to protect their own city."

The demand represents a first effort to defuse possible tensions between Tripoli's freshly-emerged revolutionaries and the scores of hardened fighters who poured in from other surrounding towns to topple Moamer Qadhafi's regime.

Across the capital, brigades from the Berber-dominated mountains to the south of Tripoli and from Misrata to the east form multiple checkpoints and often parade the city's main square.

"The responsibility for securing Tripoli should be in the hands of the sons of Tripoli," Abdullah Naqir, head of the newly formed military council of Tripoli also told AFP on Friday.

"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."

Naqir's armed group, which has yet to come under the umbrella of the National Transitional Council (NTC), has raised concerns over the proliferation of unsanctioned paramilitary groups in the capital.

"Anybody who is willing to help keep the peace in town and in Libya is welcome " Abdurraham al-Keib, who represents Tripoli at the NTC and is a member of the capital's crisis team, told reporters.

But the NTC is not accepting of "a body that builds itself on its own... It has to go through a process that filters issues and makes sure that, whatever that body is, is part of the planning for a peaceful Libya."

Keib, who is part of Tripoli's crisis management team, admitted that only "a small percentage" of formal police forces have come back to work, in part because they fear for their own safety.

"We are trying to tell them that they will be the source of safety. They will come back," he said.

Centralising authority and coordinating between disparate rebel armed groups is a challenge mirrored on the military front.

The NTC's head of military affairs, Omar al-Hariri, said Libya's national army is being rebuilt as the main guarantor of safety and security in the country, although all rebel groups are welcome to come under its umbrella.

"We've started the creation of a new national army to protect democracy, institutions and innocent civilians and not just to protect certain select individuals," he told reporters.

Hariri said Libya's national army has experienced generals and professional units that are capable of playing a critical role in the building of a new and secure Libya.

Abdul Razaq Mukhtar, who heads the capital's crisis team, vowed that the NTC will not rest "until the liberation flag is flying over all Libya."

"We want to prove to the world... we are very much capable of building our country."

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011