Powers plot 'post-Gathafi' future as rebels vow oil output

Major powers met on Thursday to map out what the United States calls an inevitable "post-Gathafi Libya" as Italy

Clinton:'time is on our side'

Clinto says 'Gathafi's days are numbered' as Italy promises hundreds of millions of euros as loan to Libyan rebels.

By Lachlan Carmichael - ABU DHABI

promised hundreds of millions of euros (dollars) in aid to answer rebel pleas for funds.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and counterparts from NATO and other countries participating in air strikes against Moamer Gathafi's administration held their third round of Libya talks in the United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi.

"Gathafi's days are numbered. We are working with our international partners through the UN to plan for the inevitable: a post-Gathafi Libya," Clinton told participants, according to her prepared remarks distributed by aides.

"Time is on our side," the chief US diplomat said, adding the international military, economic and political pressure was mounting on the Libyan colonel who has been in power for four decades.

"In the days ahead," she said, "we have to coordinate the many plans taking shape and work closely" with the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) and the Libyan people.

"Each of these efforts helps us to protect the Libyan people and lay the groundwork for a unified, democratic, and peaceful future," she said.

But Clinton offered no direct US financial contribution to the rebels, pledging instead another "$26.5 million to help all the victims of this conflict, including Libyan refugees."

Such money will likely be distributed through relief agencies.

US officials said the United States would urge Arab countries to offer more funds to the rebel administration based in Libya's second city of Benghazi.

Italy meanwhile will provide Libya's rebel council with loans and fuel products worth 300 to 400 million euros ($438 million to $584 million), an Italian foreign ministry spokesman Maurizio Massari said.

Foreign Minister Franco Frattini of Italy, the former colonial power in Libya, is co-chairing the meeting which is aimed to establish a financial mechanism to help the rebels' NTC.

The minister of oil and finance in the Libyan rebel council, Ali Tarhoni, warned that "if no financial concrete support comes out of this conference, we will consider that a total failure."

He said he hoped that at the very least Western governments would extend loans to the opposition secured on the billions of dollars of assets of the Gathafi government frozen abroad.

Tarhoni said that the rebels will start producing 100,000 barrels of oil per day "soon".

"We are hoping soon" he said, when asked when the rebels would start producing oil from the eastern fields under their control.

"100,000 barrels per day, or so," he added.

The opposition has complained that it has seen nothing concrete since the contact group last met on May 5 in Rome when the powers agreed to set up a fund to aid the rebels and promised to tap frozen Kadhfi assets.

Two dozen countries, including key NATO allies Britain, France and Italy, as well as delegates from the United Nations, the Arab League, the African Union and the Organisation of Islamic Conference are attending the talks.

A US official told reporters on condition of anonymity on Wednesday that Washington cannot say whether the NTC "is ready to assume complete control" even if Gathafi's fall is only a matter of time.

He also cautioned that there was no international consensus over when Gathafi should leave power, where he should go, or even whether he should leave Libya.

The talks among the powers came amid continuing explosions in the Libyan capital. Four blasts shook Tripoli on Thursday afternoon, an AFP journalist said, although unable to pinpoint their location. During Wednesday night into Thursday other explosions echoed through the city from near Gathafi's compound, an AFP correspondent reported.

The Western alliance said it carried out 47 strike sorties on Wednesday, hitting a vehicle storage facility in Tripoli and a missile storage facility, a missile site, a command and control facility, a tank, and four armoured fighting vehicles just outside.

NATO said it also hit an electronic warfare vehicle and a military training camp near Libya's third-largest city Misrata.

The Mediterranean coastal city is the most significant rebel-held enclave in western Libya and a rebel spokesman said up to 3,000 Gathafi troops attacked it in a three-pronged movement from the south, west and east on Wednesday.

Twelve people were killed and 33 wounded in the fighting in which Gathafi's forces deployed gunships, tanks and Grad rocket launchers as well as mortars, the spokesman, Hassan al-Galai, said.

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