Leaders gather in Paris for Libya summit

01/09/2011| IslamWeb

Representatives of the Libyan revolution who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi are to sit down with world leaders in Paris to map out the country's rebuilding, 42 years to the day after the former leader seized power in a coup.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose gamble to spearhead the West's intervention in Libya paid off this week when Gaddafi was driven from power, are hosting delegations from 60 countries and world bodies.

The meeting, dubbed the "Friends of Libya Conference", will be held in the French capital on Thursday.

The event's three-hour agenda will focus on "political and economic reconstruction".

With Gaddafi driven from power, the conference will give the ruling interim council its first platform to address the world.

Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chairman of the National Transition Council (NTC), will open the talks with an outline of the council's roadmap, which includes a new constitution, elections within 18 months and ways to avoid reprisals.

He will later address an evening news conference along with Sarkozy and Cameron.

Reporting from Paris, Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull points out that the delegations attending the meeting are also there to protect their own interests.

"Of course, the undercurrent is very much about countries jostling for very lucrative contracts for the rebuilding of Libya and also its enormous energy sector," he said.

"The NTC has promised that those countries that gave it the most support will take significant rewards. That should put France and the United Kingdom, perhaps the United States as well, at the top of the queue."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be at the talks, along with other European and African leaders and the heads of NATO and the United Nations.

Russia and China, which opposed NATO's intervention in Libya, will also be represented. Russia joined nearly 60 other countries in formally recognizing the NTC as Libya's ruling government on Thursday.

Financing reconstruction

On Wednesday, Britain's Royal Air Force flew in crates of freshly printed bank notes worth $227m to Libya to pay public workers and ease the country's cash-flow problems.

The United Nations Sanctions Committee agreed on Tuesday to release the previously frozen notes following a request from Britain after the NTC took control of much of the country and Gaddafi went into hiding.

On Thursday, France also received approval to release $2.16bn of Libyan assets.

PHOTO CAPTION

A portrait of Moammar Gadhafi is removed from the Radisson hotel in Tripoli, Libya.

Al-Jazeera