LONDON, July 27, (Agencies): Britain recognised Libya’s rebel council as the country’s legitimate government Wednesday after dramatically expelling all remaining diplomats loyal to Muammar Gaddafi from the London embassy. Foreign Secretary William Hague said he had invited the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) to take over the embassy and appoint an official envoy in a major boost for the movement fighting Gaddafi’s regime. Rebel supporters unfurled the red, black and green flag of the Libyan opposition outside the embassy after Hague’s announcement, although the Gaddafi regime’s green flag still flew from the building itself on Wednesday afternoon. “The prime minister and I have decided that the United Kingdom recognises and will deal with the National Transitional Council as the sole governmental authority in Libya,” Hague told a news conference in London.

“We are inviting the National Transitional Council to appoint a new Libyan diplomatic envoy to take over the Libyan embassy in London.” He added: “We summoned the Libyan charge d’affaires to the Foreign Office today and informed him that he and the other regime diplomats from the Gaddafi regime must leave the UK. “We no longer recognise them as the representatives of the Libyan government.”
Britain would also unlock £91 million ($149 million, 102 million euros) of Libyan oil assets frozen under a UN Security Council resolution so that the rebels could benefit from them, Hague said. “This will help to ensure that the crucial provision of fuel is maintained. We will work hard with our international partners in the coming weeks to unfreeze further Libyan assets.” Libya has “an obligation” to arrest strongman Muammar Gaddafi, the world crimes court’s prosecutor’s office said Wednesday, after suggestions he might be allowed to stay if he quits power.
“This is a legal issue,” prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s office said in a statement in The Hague, where the world crimes court is based.

“Libya is not a state party to the (court’s founding treaty) Rome Statute but it is a member of the United Nations. Therefore, according to Resolution 1970, the Libyan government has an obligation to implement the arrest warrants,” the statement said.
A Belgian court has thrown out a war crimes complaint against NATO filed by Muammar Gaddafi’s daughter over charges that a bombing in Tripoli killed her daughter, her brother and other family members.
Aisha Gaddafi sought to seize on laws that give the kingdom’s courts universal jurisdiction in war crime and genocide cases whenever the accused or victim are located in Belgium.
A deadline for Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi to step down and stay in the country has expired, the chief of the rebel National Transitional Council said Wednesday, as the warring parties spar over ways to end the conflict.
NTC chief Mustafa Mohamed Abdel Jalil told journalists in Benghazi the rebels had delivered to UN special envoy Abdul Ilah al-Khatib “a very specific, well-intentioned offer that Gaddafi can stay in Libya under three conditions.

“We made a proposal. The deadline has passed. The proposal has expired,” he said of the month-old offer.
Parties to Libya’s crisis remain deeply divided on how to end the conflict that has raged since an uprising against the regime erupted in February, UN special envoy Abdul Ilah Al-Khatib said.
Khatib this week visited the rebel capital Benghazi in Libya’s east as well as the capital Tripoli, where veteran strongman Muammar Gaddafi has his headquarters.
A UN statement issued in New York late Tuesday quoted Khatib as saying that both sides “remain far apart on reaching agreement on a political solution.”
The Libyan man convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing attended a pro-Gaddafi rally, and Libyan state TV images showing the bomber in a wheelchair in a crowd in Tripoli revived criticism in Britain on Wednesday of the decision to grant him early release on medical grounds.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi’s presence at Tuesday’s rally appeared to be another sign of defiance by the embattled regime of Muammar Gaddafi, locked in a civil war with anti-government rebels for the past five months.

Syria
Syrian security forces shot dead at least 11 people, including a child aged seven, in a “vengeance” raid on the town of Kanaker near Damascus early Wednesday, a human rights activist said.
“The security forces entered homes at dawn on Wednesday and during the operation 11 people were shot dead and more than 250 arrested,” said Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organisation for Human Rights, reached by telephone from Nicosia.
Qurabi provided AFP with the names of the 11 victims.
He said the operation in Kanaker, a town of 25,000 people, was backed by “a bulldozer and army tanks” and targeted people aged between 15 and 40.
He added that at least 11 vehicles were used to carry away those arrested in the swoop.
According to Qurabi, the raid was an “act of vengeance” because inhabitants had supplied provisions to anti-regime protesters in the southern city of Daraa, the main hub of protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s hardline rule, when it was besieged by troops earlier this year.

Another advocacy group, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in a statement emailed to AFP, named eight people it said were killed in Wednesday’s crackdown in Kanaker.
“The army and the security forces entered Kanaker at dawn and opened fire in the town,” the statement said.
“Residents of Kanaker threw stones at the tanks” and erected burning tyre barricades in the streets, it added.
According to the Observatory, seven tanks initially were positioned at the west side of town, seven at the main entrance while four entered from the east side along with a bulldozer.
The four tanks later withdrew to the main entrance under a barrage of stones while residents re-erected barricades destroyed by the bulldozer.
The statement added that a number of mosques had been “turned into civilian hospitals” to treat those injured in the military raid.
The Observatory earlier Wednesday reported that a man was killed on Tuesday at a checkpoint in the Damascus suburb of Harasta and his body later taken to a military hospital.

Egypt
Egypt’s ex-president Hosni Mubarak, due to go on trial next week for murder, is refusing food in his hospital detention and has become extremely weak, state media reported on Wednesday.
Mubarak, 83, has been detained since April on charges of ordering the killings of anti-regime protesters and corruption. He is under arrest in a Red Sea resort hospital, where he receives treatment for a heart condition.
His health, the topic of much speculation as critics accuse him of malingering to avoid trial, is “extremely weak,” the official al-Gomhuria newspaper reported, citing a hospital official.
He “completely abstains from food and intakes only some liquids and juices,” the newspaper quoted Mohammed Fathallah, head of the hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh, as saying.
Mubarak is scheduled to stand trial on August 3 with his two sons, his former interior minister Habib al-Adli and six police commanders.
The location of the trial has not yet been announced but judicial and security sources say it will probably be held in Sharm el-Sheikh, a popular tourist resort where Mubarak resided after a revolt ousted him in February.

Egypt’s top reform leader Mohamed ElBaradei has called for the formation of a broad coalition of political forces, including the Islamists, to contest the first elections since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.
Tuesday’s call by the Nobel Peace laureate, whose supporters were credited as a key force behind Egypt’s uprising, reflected growing concerns of liberal groups about a big win for the well-organized Islamists, especially the Muslim Brotherhood. That would give the Islamists power to control the drafting of a new constitution.
“We don’t have the luxury today to enter into fierce competition between the different streams, especially when we are building the house from the start,” ElBaradei told a news conference. “I talked today and before about the need for a national coalition. At this stage, there must be a parliament that represents all Egyptian forces.”
Egypt’s military ruler accused “foreign” groups on Wednesday of pushing some Egyptians into “inappropriate actions,” as tensions mount between the military and activists who demand reforms.
Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi said in an address to officers that the unspecified “foreign parties feed and create specific projects executed by some people domestically,” the official MENA news agency reported.

Saudi Arabia
Saudi authorities have freed 44 Shi’ite protesters who called for an end to human rights violations in the country and protested against Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Bahrain, activists said on Wednesday.
Activists in the oil-producing Eastern Province, where Saudi Arabia’s minority Shi’ites reside, say the government has detained dozens of Shi’ite protesters over the past four months after they held small demonstrations, demanding more rights.
“Most of them were calling for more human rights... They also protested against Saudi Arabia’s involvement in Bahrain,” said Fouad Ali, an activist in the Eastern Province.
“They released 44 of them this morning. There are still 28 left in Dammam prison, 10 in Khobar prison and 11 in Dammam (police station),” said Ali, who was involved in the release efforts.
Meanwhile, Islamist activists in Saudi Arabia have condemned government plans to pass an anti-terrorism law which international rights groups fear will be used to crackdown on dissent in the absolute monarchy.
The unofficial Islamic Umma party, which was set up in February, posted on its website a call for religious scholars to speak out against what it called, “laws that aim to seize the citizens’ right to criticise the government”.

Yemen
EU High Representative Catherine Ashton met in Brussels Tuesday night Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi and discussed the latest situation in Yemen.
Ashton in a statement issued today called on the Yemeni government to work with all parties, in order immediately take forward Yemen’s political transition.
“The initiative put forward by the Gulf Cooperation Council remains the key point of reference for Yemen’s transition,” she stressed.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague urged Wednesday President Saleh of Yemen to agree and implement GCC agreement without delay.
Commenting on his meeting here on Wednesday with Yemeni Foreign Minister, Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi, Foreign Secretary Hague said: “This is a critical time for Yemen, with political, security, economic and humanitarian crises.” The UK stands ready to help, the minister said in a statement.

“The primary responsibility of the Yemeni government must be to protect its citizens, not only from greater violence but from economic collapse,” Hague emphasized.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who escaped an attempt on his life by opponents, will only cede power through the ballot box and the country will descend into civil war if he is forced from office, his foreign minister said.
A popular uprising against Saleh’s 33-year rule, high profile defections, and an assassination attempt in June which left him with severe burns and forced him to undergo eight operations have all failed to persuade him to give up.
“President Saleh made this very clear. He repeatedly said he is ready to transfer power anytime, but through early elections, through the ballot box and by adhering to the constitution,” Abubakr al-Qirbi told Reuters in an interview.
“Now the issue is for the ruling party and the opposition parties to agree on a date for early elections,” he said.