Libyans urged to unite after death of Gaddafi (Reuters)

MISRATA, Libya (Reuters) – Libya's interim prime minister said he was resigning on Saturday and urged new leaders to seize a "very limited opportunity" and resolve rivalries now surfacing after Muammar Gaddafi's death.

With regional differences emerging about what to do with Gaddafi's still unburied body, the formal end to the war and the carve-up of power, Libya's outgoing premier said the coming days posed a crucial test of resolve for the new men in power.

Mahmoud Jibril said he would step down later on Saturday, after seven months as prime minister of the Western-backed rebel government now that the legal declaration of "liberation" was expected on Sunday following Gaddafi's killing on Thursday.

But in a parting shot at an international business forum in Jordan, he warned Libyans to avoid in-fighting if Libyans were to keep to a plan to hold their first free election next year.

Leaders required "resolve," he said, "in the next few days."

In Misrata, the curious and the relieved filed for a second day through a market cold store to view the body of Gaddafi, whose surprise capture and killing in his hometown of Sirte sparked joy - and renewed jockeying for postwar influence.

Visitors wore surgical masks against the stench, an image that may trouble some Muslims, for whom swift burial is a holy duty - even if few Libyans share the unease among their Western allies over what some believe was a summary execution.

Jibril said progress for Libya would need great resolution, both by interim leaders on the National Transitional Council and by six million war-weary people: "First," he said, "What kind of resolve the NTC will show in the next few days?

"And the other thing depends mainly on the Libyan people - whether they differentiate between the past and the future."

He added: "I am counting on them to look ahead and remember the kind of agony they went through in the last 42 years.

"We need to seize this very limited opportunity."

"LIBERATION"

The formal declaration of an end to war and of "liberation" from Gaddafi's rule was expected to be made by NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil on Sunday in the eastern city of Benghazi, the seat of the revolt inspired by the fall of autocrats in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt.

There have been several delays to the announcement. It will set a clock ticking on a plan for a new government and constitutional assembly leading to full democracy in 2013.

Jibril reaffirmed the plan was for elections to the body that will draft a constitution to be held in eight months.

Gaddafi's body remained in Misrata, bearing wounds assumed to have been inflicted by fighters from the city who hauled him from a drain in his hometown Sirte. A field commander in Misrata worried that trouble was brewing:

"The fear now is what is going to happen next," he said, speaking to Reuters privately, as ordinary Libyans, some taking pictures for family albums, filed in under armed guard to see for themselves that the man they feared was truly dead.

"There is going to be regional in-fighting. You have Zintan and Misrata on one side and then Benghazi and the east," the guerrilla said. "There is in-fighting even inside the army."

DIVISIONS

Comparisons with Iraq after Saddam Hussein are tempered by the absence of the Sunni-Shi'ite divide which ravaged that country. However, as in Iraq, there are vast energy resources at stake and international powers keen to exploit them.

Regional enmities thrive, as well as differences between Islamists and secularists and among those who once served Gaddafi - like NTC head Abdel Jalil - and others. There is also ethnic tension between Arabs and Berbers.

Gaddafi's surviving family, in exile, have asked that his body and that of his son Mo'tassim be handed over to tribal kinsmen from Sirte. NTC officials said they were trying to arrange a secret resting place to avoid loyalist supporters making it a shrine.

Unlike on Friday, Gaddafi's body was covered by a blanket that left only his head exposed, hiding bruises on his torso and scratch marks on his chest that had earlier been visible.

A Reuters reporter who viewed the body said Gaddafi's head had been turned to the left. That hid a bullethole that earlier could be seen on the left side of his face.

SUMMARY EXECUTION?

Gaddafi's family and international human rights groups have urged an inquiry into how Gaddafi, 69, was killed, since gory cellphone video footage showed him alive but being beaten and taunted by his captors. Jibril said on the day that Gaddafi was killed in "crossfire" in an ambulance taking him to hospital.

But an ambulance driver in Sirte told Reuters Gaddafi was already dead by the time he picked him up, and a local military commander in Misrata said "over-enthusiastic" fighters had taken matters into their own hands:

"We wanted to keep him alive. But the young guys...," he told Reuters. "Things went out of control."

The International Criminal Court at The Hague had wanted to try Gaddafi for war crimes and may yet be able to try his son Saif al-Islam if he is found. NTC officials believe he escaped from the last redoubt in Sirte, after French jets had scattered a convoy of dozens of vehicles trying to flee with his father.

Intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, the third man wanted by the ICC, managed to reach Niger, officials have said.

Libyans also want to try some of the old guard at home.

Despite the qualms of some abroad, few compatriots are troubled by Gaddafi's bloody end, captured in clips of cellphone video broadcast around the world.

"People in the West don't understand the agony and pain that the people went through during the past 42 years," said Jibril, who added he felt "reborn" when he heard the news.

Abdulatif, a pilot, who came to see the body in Misrata, asked: "What would he tell the mother whose children were killed or the girls who were raped? If he lived and was killed a thousand times that would still only be a trifle."

Nonetheless, some Libyans have expressed unease at the way Gaddafi's body has been treated - Muslim custom dictates it should have been buried by sundown on Thursday - and at other matters of religion and respect for the dead.

Gaddafi's daughter Aisha, her mother and two of her brothers fled to Algeria after the fall of Tripoli. Aisha gave birth on the day she arrived.

The government in Algiers has angered the NTC by refusing to send them back. But an Algerian newspaper on Saturday quoted official sources saying that, following the death of the head of the family, they might now reconsider.

(Additional reporting by Taha Zargoun in Sirte, Barry Malone, Yasmine Saleh and Jessica Donati in Tripoli, Brian Rohan in Benghazi, Christian Lowe, Jon Hemming and Andrew Hammond in Tunis, Samia Nakhoul in Amman, Tom Pfeiffer at Dead Sea, Jordan, David Brunnstrom in Brussels and Lamine Chikhi in Algiers; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Andrew Roche)

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Local politicians urged park to postpone cleanup (AP)

By KAREN MATTHEWS and COLLEEN LONG, Associated Press Karen Matthews And Colleen Long, Associated Press – 7?mins?ago

NEW YORK – The owners of a New York plaza where protesters have camped out for a month decided Friday to put off cleaning it, sending up cheers from demonstrators who feared the plan was merely a pretext to evict them and said the victory emboldened their movement.

Protesters were already scrambling to scrub the park where they've been sleeping and eating for weeks when, under pressure from local officials, the owners of the park decided to call off their own cleanup.

"It's really a victory for freedom of speech and for democracy," said Liane Nikitovich, 44, a fitness instructor. "This is one moment. It shows that our support is growing worldwide."

In an emailed statement, Brookfield said Friday that it had deferred cleaning the park for a short period while it negotiates with protesters.

"At the request of a number of local political leaders, Brookfield Properties has deferred the cleaning of Zuccotti Park for a short period of time while an attempt is made to reach a resolution regarding the manner in which Zuccotti Park is being used by the protesters," the company said.

The protesters declared their decision a boon to their movement, which blames Wall Street and corporate interests for the economic pain they say all but the wealthiest Americans have endured since the financial meltdown. Since starting a month ago in New York, the movement has spread to cities across the U.S. and the world.

"This development has emboldened the movement and sent a clear message that the power of the people has prevailed against Wall Street," New York organizers said in a statement.

In Denver early Friday, police in riot gear herded hundreds of protesters away from the Colorado state Capitol, arresting about two dozen and dismantling their encampment. In Trenton, N.J., protesters were ordered to remove tents from their encampment near a war memorial.

New York police arrested 14 people, including protesters who obstructed traffic by standing or sitting in the street, and others who tuned over trash baskets, knocked over a police scooter and hurled bottles.

A few blocks south of the park, about two dozen demonstrators screamed "Pigs!" and hurled obscenities at a dozen officers in riot gear, who showed no visible reaction. The officers left the area, trailed by protesters with cameras.

Protesters have had some previous run-ins with police, including mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge and an incident in which some protesters were pepper-sprayed.

Several protests are planned this weekend in the U.S., Canada and Europe, as well as in Asia and Africa, and the official capitulation in New York could buoy those events.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose girlfriend is on Brookfield's board of directors, said his staff was under strict orders not to pressure the company one way or the other. He noted that the company can still go ahead with the cleanup at some point.

"My understanding is that Brookfield got lots of calls from many elected officials threatening them and saying ... `We're going to make your life more difficult,'" he said on his weekly radio show.

The company's rules, which haven't been enforced, have all along prohibited tarps, sleeping bags and storing personal property on the ground. Though the park is privately owned, it is required to be open to the public 24 hours per day.

Brookfield, a publicly traded real estate firm, had planned to power-wash the New York plaza section by section over 12 hours and allow the protesters back — but without much of the equipment they needed to sleep and camp there. The company called the conditions at the park unsanitary and unsafe.

The New York Police Department had said it would make arrests if Brookfield requested it and laws were broken. But the deputy mayor's statement indicated that "for the time being" Brookfield was withdrawing its request for police assistance in cleaning the park.

A confrontation between police and protesters, who had vowed to stay put through civil disobedience, had been feared. Many protesters had said the only way they would leave was by force, and organizers sent out a mass email Thursday asking supporters to "defend the occupation from eviction."

Supporters including union members streamed into the plaza in the early morning darkness in a show of solidarity in a show several hundred strong.

Boisterous cheers floated up from the crowd as the announcement of the cleaning postponement circulated, and a small group soon marched away with brooms, saying they were going to clean up Wall Street, a few blocks away.

Some protesters scrubbed the park's marble and pavement with brooms and soapy water and picked up trash as others unfurled tarps on the rain-dampened concrete and ate potluck breakfast off paper plates. One man practiced his yoga sun salutation despite the dark clouds.

"I think it's really a prophetic moment," said Annie Gonzalez, a student at Union Theological Seminary who wore a sign identifying her as an Occupy Wall Street chaplain. She likened the protesters to "the prophets of the Old Testament, crying out that there's no justice."

The demand that protesters clear out had set up a potential turning point in a movement that began Sept. 17 with a small group of activists and has swelled to include several thousand people at times, from many walks of life. Occupy Wall Street has inspired similar demonstrations across the country and become an issue in the Republican presidential primary race.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made a reference to the protests in a speech Friday at The Economic Club of New York.

"The protests happening just a few miles from here ought to be reminder to all of us that we have a great deal of work to do to live up to the expectations of the American people," she said.

Attorneys from the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild — who are representing an Occupy Wall Street sanitation working group — wrote a letter to Brookfield saying the company's request to get police to help implement its cleanup plan threatened "fundamental constitutional rights."

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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Larry Neumeister, Tom McElroy, Cara Anna, Deepti Hajela, Cristian Salazar, Verena Dobnik, and Meghan Barr, and photographer Mary Altaffer in New York; and Thomas Peipert in Denver.

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