ISTANBUL, July 15, (Agencies): Rebel leaders won recognition as the legitimate government of Libya from the United States and other world powers on Friday in a major boost to the rebels’ faltering campaign to oust Muammar Gaddafi.
Western nations said they also planned to increase the military pressure on Gaddafi’s forces to press him to give up power after 41 years at the head of the North African state.
Recognition of the rebels, announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a meeting in Turkey of the international contact group on Libya, is an important diplomatic step which could unlock billions of dollars in frozen Libyan funds.
The decision comes as reports are circulating that Gaddafi has sent out emissaries seeking a negotiated end to the conflict, although he himself has remained defiant in his public utterances.
The Istanbul conference attended by more than 30 countries and international bodies also agreed a road map whereby Gaddafi should relinquish power and plans for Libya’s transition to democracy under the rebel National Transitional Council (TNC).

“Until an interim authority is in place, the United States will recognize the TNC as the legitimate governing authority for Libya, and we will deal with it on that basis,” Clinton said.
The decision to recognise the rebels, who have been waging a five-month military campaign against Gaddafi, meant the Libyan leader had no option but to stand down, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said.
The contact group statement added: “... the formation of an interim government should be quickly followed by the convening of a National Congress with representatives from all parts of Libya.”
The UN Secretary-General’s special envoy to Libya, Abdul Elah al-Khatib, will be authorised to present terms for Gaddafi to leave power, but the British foreign minister said military action against Gaddafi would be stepped up at the same time.
The political package to be offered Gaddafi will include a ceasefire to halt fighting in the five-month-old war.

A rebel spokesman said he did not expect a ceasefire until Gaddafi had been defeated and rejected suggestions of a pause in the fighting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins at the start of August.
Mahmud Shammam, press secretary for the TNC, said: “Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) had great battles during Ramadan in Makkah, so there is nothing religious that will keep us from fighting for our freedom.”
British Foreign Secretary William Hague told Reuters that at the same time as al-Khatib pursues a political settlement, “the military pressure on the regime will continue to intensify.”
The Libya contact group, established in London in March, is trying, at its fourth meeting, to find a political solution that would persuade Gaddafi to quit.
China and Russia, which have taken a softer line towards Gaddafi, were invited to the contact group meeting for the first time, but decided not to become involved.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said he hoped a political solution could emerge by the start of Ramadan.

He backed a rebel proposal for the release of $3 billion of frozen Libyan assets to alleviate a “grave” humanitarian situation during Ramadan in areas of Libya controlled by the rebels and by Gaddafi.
“We have agreed to lead a humanitarian aid campaign to transfer aid to all Libyan cities. We want the suffering of the Libyan people to end and to form the necessary humanitarian corridors,” Davutoglu said.
US officials said the decision to extend formal diplomatic recognition marked an important step toward unblocking more than $34 billion in Libyan assets in the United States but cautioned it could still take time to get cash flowing.
Speaking in The Hague on Thursday, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen called on alliance members to provide more warplanes to bomb increasingly elusive Libyan military targets.
Britain said it was sending four more Tornado reconnaissance planes to beef up the NATO mission. Such aircraft have become vital as Gaddafi’s forces have hidden their armour and artillery from NATO warplanes.
Britain said its warplanes had on Thursday destroyed a Libyan army armoured personnel carrier near Zlitan, west of the rebel stronghold of Misrata.
British aircraft had so far damaged or destroyed more than 500 Libyan military targets including command and control sites.

“But as the campaign has progressed, the regime is increasingly attempting to conceal troops, equipment and headquarters, often in populated areas,” a British military spokesman, General Nick Pope, said.
On the ground, rebel fighters have been unable to make much progress against pro-Gaddafi forces of late.
On the front line near the rebel stronghold of Misrata in the west, rebel fighters were digging in against mortar fire from pro-Gaddafi forces, sheltering in large concrete water pipes brought up by bulldozer to serve as makeshift protection.
One fighter, who gave his name as Bashir, said: “Whenever we have ammunition, we move forward. But now we are not moving.”
Ahmed, a 19-year-old student, said: “It’s not the Grad missiles we are afraid of. They are easy. It’s the mortars we are afraid of.”
Rebel commanders in the village of Al-Qawalish, about 100 km (60 miles) west of Tripoli, said they were massing their forces for an advance east towards the town of Garyan, which controls access to the main highway to the capital, but they have struggled to hold their positions in recent days.
Earlier this week, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said emissaries from Gaddafi’s government in contact with NATO members had said that Gaddafi was ready to quit, but US officials were unconvinced.
Gaddafi himself, in his latest speech on Libyan television on Thursday evening, said he was staying put.
“I will fight until the end,” he said. “The end of NATO will be in Libya.”
Kuwait has donated $50 million to the Libyan opposition Transitional National Council (TNC), Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Dr Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah said Friday.
The amount is part of a larger $180 million sum that will go to the Benghazi-based Libyan TNC, which seeks a transitional democratic shift of power.
The donation was granted upon the directions of HH the Amir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti foreign minister said in a speech given on his behalf at the International Contact Group meeting on Libya being held in Istanbul.

Syria
Syrian security forces shot dead at least 20 protesters on Friday as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the country in the biggest protests so far against President Bashar al-Assad.
Assad, facing the greatest challenge to 40 years of Baath Party rule, has sought to crush demonstrations that broke out in March. But although rights groups say some 1,400 civilians have been killed, the protests have swelled in size.
“These are the biggest demonstrations so far. It is a clear challenge to the authorities, especially when we see all these numbers coming out from Damascus for the first time,” said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Police fired live ammunition and teargas in the capital Damascus and its suburbs, killing 11 people, and in southern Syria near the Jordanian border, where four people were killed, witnesses and activists said.
Three protesters were also shot dead in the northwestern province of Idlib, near the Turkish border, where troops and tanks have attacked villages, the witnesses and activists said. Two people were also killed in the city of Homs.

A witness in the Rukn al-Din district of Damascus said hundreds of young men wearing white masks fought security forces with sticks and stones.
“Down, down Bashar al-Assad”, they chanted.
“We are in Midan and they are firing teargas at us, people are chanting,” a witness said by telephone from the centre of Damascus.
In the city of Hama, scene of a 1982 massacre by the military, live video footage filmed by residents showed a huge crowd in the main Orontos Square shouting “the people want the overthrow of the regime”.
At least 350,000 people demonstrated in the eastern province of Deir al Zor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Syrian forces shot dead two pro-democracy protesters there on Thursday, residents said.
Until now, the biggest demonstrations have taken place in impoverished towns and villages outside Damascus where one in 10 of Syria’s 20 million population lives. Protests in the capital have rarely mustered more than a few hundred people.

Damascus has benefited from substantial foreign investment and its citizens are on average wealthier than those in the provinces. Security is also much tighter.
Activists estimate the number of secret police on the streets of Damascus has more than doubled since protests started but the economy has stagnated. Faced with uncertainty, foreign investors are pulling out in droves and unemployment is rising.
To counter that, Syria’s main ally, Iran, is considering offering $5.8 billion in financial help, including a three-month loan worth $1.5 billion to be made available immediately, French business newspaper Les Echos said, citing a report by a Tehran think-tank linked to Iran’s leadership.
International sanctions are targeted at Syria’s leaders, not at its banks and companies. But France and the United States are pressing for tougher penalties and a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the crackdown, after the embassies of both countries in Syria were attacked.
“We have said Syria can’t go back to the way it was before, that Assad has lost his legitimacy in the eyes of his own people,” US Secretary of States Hillary Clinton told a news conference in Istanbul.
“We, along with many others in the region and beyond, have said we strongly support a democratic transition,” she said. “The ultimate destiny of the Syrian regime and Syrian people lies with the people themselves.”

Egypt
Thousands of protesters rallied across Egypt on Friday, capping a week of nationwide sit-ins to demand political change as anger grows with the military rulers over the slow pace of reform.
More than 28 movements had called for the rallies to pressure the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) — which took power when president Hosni Mubarak was toppled — to respond to their demands.
In Cairo, thousands of demonstrators crowded into Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the protest movement that overthrew Mubarak in February and where hundreds have been staging a sit-in for a week.
A preacher who gave the sermon at the Friday noon prayer in the square called for speedy trials of policemen responsible for the deaths of protesters during the 18-day revolt and led a funeral prayer for them, the official MENA news agency reported.
In the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, around 5,000 people broke off from the main rally at Qaed Ibrahim Square to protest outside the police headquarters where they called for the resignation of Interior Minister Mansur Essawy.

In Suez, several hundred people protested in Al-Arbaeen Square, as troops continued to protect the entrance to the strategic Suez Canal.
The turnout was significantly smaller than last week, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets.
Some such as the powerful Muslim Brotherhood movement have stayed away from protests after concessions offered by the army and government earlier this week.
“The cabinet has the right to be given a chance for two weeks,” senior Brotherhood leader Essam al-Erian told AFP.
But he said that after two weeks, the results will “either merit gratitude or protest.”
The protesters, who have dubbed the rallies the “Friday of the Final Warning,” are calling for a defined and transparent plan for the transition, criticising the military junta for their absolute grip on power.
The cabinet said it had sent ambulances and medics to the square to tend to protesters on hunger strike.

Hisham Hammouda, a financial planner who quit his job 11 days ago to join the protests, has not eaten for six days. He insists that the revolution should remain peaceful.
“We will try to use all harmless ways to express ourselves,” Hammouda said from Tahrir Square.
Among the key demands are an end to military trials of civilians, the redistribution of wealth and the open and speedy trials of former regime officials.
Protesters also want police accused of torturing and killing protesters — whether before or during the January 25 uprising — to be brought to justice.
The mounting tension has prompted both the government and the military council to offer some concessions in a bid to placate protesters.
Prime Minister Essam Sharaf ordered the sacking of senior police officers accused of abuse and Essawy announced a complete restructuring of his department.
On Wednesday, after a lengthy silence, the military council insisted it supported the revolution and said it would continue to support the goals of the revolution.
But the concessions fell flat with protesters, who labelled them empty rhetoric.
“Our demands are the same but the conditions are different, since we reject the speeches of the prime minister and SCAF,” said Bola Abdou, 23, one of those camping in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
“We want (our demands) taken into account, so we will stay in the square,” said Ibrahim Abul Kheir, 25, a member of the April 6 protest movement.

Yemen
Ten Yemenis were killed and at least 37 others wounded in the city of Taez, south of Sanaa, security and tribal sources and witnesses said on Friday.
Security official Colonel Ahmed Rezaz and two companions were killed in an ambush by armed opposition tribesmen, a security source in Taez said.
Witnesses said four tribesmen and three civilians were also wounded in the attack in the Sharab al-Rona area of the city.
The security source said that seven civilians were also killed and 30 wounded by shelling in northern Taez by Yemen’s Republican Guards, which began during clashes with opposition tribesmen.
Tribal sources and witnesses had earlier put the toll from the shelling at two dead and 22 wounded.
The fighting broke out on Thursday night between the Guards, loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and tribesmen, allied with demonstrators who have been calling for him to quit since January, the tribal sources said.
The shelling was especially focused on Al-Rawda and Osaifra neighbourhoods.
Witnesses said there was widespread panic in the city.
Anti-regime activists had meanwhile appealed for protests under the slogan “Friday of a Civil State,” after a call from influential cleric Sheikh Abdel Majid al-Zindani for the establishment of an Islamic state.
Tens of thousands of anti-regime protesters prayed at Sanaa’s University Square, the epicentre of protests against Saleh, but did not linger long afterwards, an AFP correspondent reported.
Saleh supporters had called for demonstrations of “Thanks and gratitude to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” in reference to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, where Saleh has been hospitalised for more than a month after being wounded in a bomb attack on his palace.
Tens of thousands of regime supporters also turned out on Friday in the capital, the AFP correspondent said.

Bahrain
More than 2,000 workers in Bahrain have been fired from state-linked firms and government jobs in apparent retribution for participating in pro-democracy protests earlier this year, Human Rights Watch said Friday.
Bahrain’s security forces have smothered an uprising by the Gulf kingdom’s majority Shiites seeking greater freedoms and rights from the Sunni rulers in the tiny but strategically important island nation that is the home of the US Navy’s 5th Fleet.
Stripping perceived opposition supporters of their jobs would mark an expansion of the crackdown by targeting people’s livelihoods as a warning to others not to return to the streets.
The New York-based rights group said more than 2,000 workers and union activists were dismissed from jobs at government ministries, schools, hospitals and firms that include the state-run Bahrain Petroleum Company.

“The dismissals may have violated Bahraini labor laws as well as international standards, in particular those prohibiting discrimination on the basis of political opinion,” the rights group said in a statement calling on Bahraini authorities to investigate and reinstate unlawfully dismissed workers.
Bahrain’s energy minister, Abdulhussain bin Ali Mirza, told the state-run Bahrain News Agency in May that the state oil company had dismissed 293 employees since March 15, when authorities imposed martial law to quell the Shiite-led campaign to loosen the Sunni monarchy’s grip on power. As of July 12, the oil company has dismissed 303 workers, the rights groups said in Friday’s statement.
Human Rights Watch also said Bahrain’s Education Ministry has fired 111 employees since April and the government also disbanded the Teachers Association.
Last month, the Geneva-based International Labor Organization sharply criticized the dismissal of workers and urged Bahrain to reinstate them.
In May, a major US-based labor group asked Washington to suspend a free trade pact with Bahrain in response to the purging of union leaders accused of supporting pro-reform protests.
Bahrain’s Shiites account for about 70 percent of the kingdom’s population, but they claim systematic discrimination, including being blocked from top military and political posts. Their revolt in February - inspired by other Arab uprisings around the region - have been by far the biggest domestic challenge to any Gulf ruler in decades.

At least 32 people have died and hundreds of protesters, opposition activists and Shiite professionals like doctors and lawyers have been detained during five months of demonstrations and crackdowns. Dozens of them have been tried in a special security tribunal, including eight prominent opposition figures who were convicted of anti-state crimes last month and sentenced to life imprisonment.A Bahraini activist jailed for reading a poem at a pro-reform protest has been freed, Amnesty International said on Friday, calling for conditions allegedly attached to her release to be dropped.
“Ayat al-Qarmezi, a poet and university student at the Faculty of Teachers in Bahrain, sentenced to one year in prison for reading a poem, was released on July 13,” the rights group said in a statement.
“Shortly after her release, Amnesty International talked to her lawyer and family, who said that Ayat was well and happy to be free. However, her release is reportedly conditional on not travelling outside Bahrain or speaking to the media about her detention,” it said.
“Amnesty International is calling on the authorities to remove any that have been imposed, to annul her conviction and to clarify her current legal status,” the statement said.
Qarmezi read a poem addressed to Bahrain’s King Hamad at a February protest in the capital Manama.
“We are the people who will kill humiliation and assassinate misery / Don’t you hear their cries, don’t you hear their screams?” it said.

Jordan
At least 16 people, including journalists and policemen, were injured on Friday when police tried to stop clashes between pro-reform demonstrators and government supporters in central Amman.
Police used batons to break up the clashes outside city hall, beating and injuring nine journalists who were wearing orange vests marked “Press,” an AFP reporter at the scene said.
The injured included an AFP photographer and a female Islamist activist.
“We were beaten by police, although we were wearing special press vests,” said the photographer. “We thought we would be safe when we stood next to the police and away from the clashes.”
A photographer who works for another international news agency said he was ordered by police not to take pictures, while New York Times reporter Kareem Fahim was beaten by 10 policemen.
A police spokesman said that seven policemen had been injured in the clashes, including two who were “stabbed.”

The official Petra news agency quoted police spokesman Mohammed Khatib as saying that “security forces intervened to break up a brawl between protesters of differing opinions,” in a reference to government loyalists and critics.
Around 2,000 people, including Islamists and youth groups, marched from the nearby Al-Husseini mosque to the city hall before clashing with hundreds of government supporters.
“Rulers, we want to reform the regime. We want the palace to hear the voices of Jordanians,” the demonstrators chanted.
They carried banners reading “We need political, economic and social reforms for future generations,” and “It’s our right to fight corruption.”
It was still unclear if the young demonstrators will defy government warnings and hold an open-ended sit-in.
Meanwhile, rallies for reform and against “rampant corruption” drew hundreds of demonstrators in the southern cities of Tafileh, Man and Karak, as well as Irbid and Jerash in the north.
Since January, Jordan has faced a protest movement demanding political and economic reforms and an end to corruption.