Libya PM tries to resolve tribal dispute

Sabha, Libya: Libya's prime minister flew to a desert oasis city on Sunday to try to patch up a tribal dispute that has killed about 150 people over the past week and underscored the ethnic fault lines threatening Libya's stability.

A Reuters team which flew with the prime minister to Sabha, about 750km south of the Libyan capital, said a ceasefire appeared to be holding between the Tibu ethnic group and the Sabha militias with which they had been clashing.

Smashed windows at a conference centre and burned-out vehicles in a Tibu-controlled neighbourhood bore testimony to the fighting over the past days, some of the worst since a revolt last year overthrew Muammar Gaddafi.

Asked about the situation in Sabha, Prime Minister Abdul Rahim Al Keeb told Reuters: "It's much better than I thought."

He said he wanted to show the opposing sides in Sabha that the new Libya had a place for all tribes and ethnic groups.

The Tibu have black skin and some have ties to neighbouring Chad, while their opponents are lighter-skinned ethnic Arabs who see the Tibu as outsiders.

"Every Libyan is important to us. We're going to take care of them like we do take care of any other Libyan, like our brothers and sisters," Al Keeb told Reuters after addressing about 500 local people from the non-Tibu camp.

Used and abused

"This problem has a historical background ... The past regime has used and abused this problem," he said, in reference to Gaddafi's tactic of playing up tribal differences to weaken any opposition against him. Al Keeb was then heckled by a man who was shouting that the government was late in acting to stop the clashes and called on the military to deal with the Tibu.

Al Keeb tried to talk to the heckler, but his security detail ushered him into a car to head onto his next meeting, with Tibu elders.

As his convoy drove through Tibu-controlled neighbourhoods, fighters from the tribe lined the roads, with rifles in their hands. They shouted "Allahu Akbar!" (God is greatest), and smiled and waved at the prime minister's motorcade.

Once at the venue for the meeting, Al Keeb listened as Tibu representatives, sitting in a circle on mats laid out on the ground, described how the clashes had unfolded.

Restoring order in Sabha is not only important internally for Libya but also for stability in the wider region.

In the chaos that followed Gaddafi's fall, the south has been used as a smuggling route for weapons which are reaching Al Qaida in the Sahara and fanning a separatist rebellion by Tawareq.

The conflict escalates

Residents of two rival Libyan towns near the western border with Tunisia say that clashes have erupted between their militias.

The battle between Ragdalein and Zwara is the latest in a series of local conflicts that demonstrate the weak authority of Libya's new government.

A spokesman for the Ragdalein fighters, Rami Kanaan, says they captured 34 Zwara men on Sunday. He says the move came after months of abuses by a Zwara brigade, including the looting of property.

Zwara local council head Abu Bakr Taloa says 21 of his men were captured. He says that Ragdalein was a hub for deposed dictator Muammar Gaddafi's loyalists.

The conflict escalated into battles involving automatic rifles and tanks, according to both sides. There was no immediate word of casualties.