Gaddafi Unburied, Libyans Manoeuvre For New Era

Misrata, Oct 22: Muammar Gaddafi's body lay still unburied as Libya's new men of power wrangled over its fate and a formal announcement the war was over, a move the outgoing premier said on Saturday should mean free elections in the middle of next year.

Mahmoud Jibril, an expatriate academic who has been prime minister in the Western-backed rebel government, confirmed he was stepping down and that the coming days would be a critical test of how the new leadership and Libya's six million people could handle their freedom after 42 years at Gaddafi's whim.

In Misrata, the once besieged city whose rebel fighters are pushing claims for a big stake in a "reborn", oil-rich Libya, they guarded the market cold store where, for a second day, the curious and the relieved filed in to view the fallen strongman, whose surprise capture and killing in his home town of Sirte on Thursday sparked joy -- and renewed jockeying for influence.

Gaddafi's surviving family, in exile, have asked that his body, and that of his son Mo'tassim, be handed over to tribal kinsmen from Sirte. Officials with the National Transitional Council (NTC) said they were trying to arrange a secret resting place that would avoid loyalist supporters making it a shrine.

From: http://ping.fm/ShqGO