African leader says Gadhafi OKs plan

AJDABIYA, Libya – South African President Jacob Zuma said Sunday that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi had accepted a “road map” for ending the conflict that pits his forces against rebels determined to end his four-decade rule.

Zuma, who according to news reports led a delegation of African Union leaders in a meeting with Gadhafi in his compound in Tripoli, did not disclose details of the cease-fire proposal. He also didn’t specify whether Gadhafi himself or his adjutants had accepted the African Union plan.

The road map calls for making it easier to get humanitarian supplies to besieged areas and starting a dialogue between the rebels and Gadhafi’s regime, the Associated Press reported.

Zuma said the delegation, which plans to meet the rebel leadership today in Benghazi, had completed its mission with Gadhafi. He called on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to halt its airstrikes against the Tripoli regime’s forces.

“The brother leader’s delegation has accepted the road map as presented by us,” Zuma said, according to AP.

Libyan state television did not report that the Gadhafi government had agreed to an African Union proposal.

Rebel leaders have demanded that Gadhafi relinquish power and made it clear they will not accept the strongman, his relatives or close associates remaining in charge of the country.

Zuma’s statements came hours after NATO airstrikes pounded Gadhafi forces fighting rebels for control of Ajdabiya, a strategic city less than two hours from the rebels’ de facto capital of Benghazi. A day earlier, Gadhafi forces had burst into the city and raked it with gunfire in a direct assault that raised the specter of a rebel collapse.

The battle underscored how much the rebels need Western fighter planes to hold Gadhafi’s army and paramilitary units back. Since the U.N. Security Council authorized NATO’s mission to protect civilians three weeks ago, whenever Western planes do not bomb them, Gadhafi’s fighters have been able to seize rebel strongholds.

In Ajdabiya, rebels covered the charred bodies of Gadhafi’s fighters with blankets, as smoke and flames licked the dozen crushed pickup trucks in the aftermath of NATO’s airstrikes.

“Gadhafi’s forces had more cohesiveness and adaptability than the French, British and U.S. planners and policy figures that led NATO into the fighting calculated,” said Anthony Cordesman, a defense expert with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The end result is what is now a war of political attrition where Gadhafi’s forces will win as long as NATO air power remains … limited by the fear of civilian casualties.”

Limited by a U.N. mandate that calls exclusively for protecting civilians and not toppling Gadhafi, NATO cannot just attack the Libyan leader’s fighters the way it did Serbian forces during the 1999 Kosovo crisis. As a result, NATO keeps rebel fighters at arm’s length, creating an opportunity for Gadhafi’s fighters to advance.