Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil (front) and Libya's Prime Minister-designate Abdurrahim El-Keib stand together during a ceremony where ministers of the new government took their oaths of office in Tripoli 4 December, 2011. (Photo:Reuters)
Libya's new rulers are ready to forgive the forces of slain leader Muammar Gaddafi who battled rebels trying to topple his autocratic regime, National Transitional Council chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil said on Saturday.
"In Libya we are able to absorb all. Libya is for all," Abdel Jalil said in Tripoli as he launched a national reconciliation conference organised by the NTC.
"Despite what the army of the oppressor did to our cities and our villages, our brothers who fought against the rebels as the army of Gaddafi, we are ready to forgive them," he said.
"We are able to forgive and tolerate," he added.
The conference, the first of its kind since the NTC on 23 October declared the total liberation of Libya, was attended by delegates from the major Libyan tribes and ethnic groups, as well as from Qatar and Tunisia.
Libya's new interim Prime Minister Abdel Rahim al-Kib echoed Abdel Jalil.
"National reconciliation is an essential condition to build the constitutional institutions of a state," he told the conference.
"The future cannot be built with revenge as a base."
Kib announced his government on 22 November, just a month after the capture and lynching of Gaddafi who ruled the country with an iron fist for 42 years.
A statement issued last month said the new government will help efforts by the NTC "to achieve national reconciliation" in Libya.
It will also strive to rebuild the army and the security forces and promote "the integration of interested citizens into these institutions," said the statement.
Meanwhile Kib's government is under heavy pressure to disarm hundreds of former rebels who toppled Gaddafi's regime and who are now enforcing security on the streets.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said after the death of Gaddafi on 20 October that for the transitional authorities in Libya "inclusion and pluralism must be the watchwords," urging all sides to avoid revenge attacks.
Observers and human rights group have said that Libya's new rulers will have to come up with firm plans to win the trust of residents of towns such as Bani Walid and Sirte, former strongholds of Gaddafi.
"National reconciliation is extremely important... it is an issue in Bani Walid," Mahmud Warfalli, member of Libya's powerful Warfalla tribe and spokesman of the Bani Walid local council, told AFP on the sidelines of the conference.
The town, just 170 kilometres (105 miles) from the capital Tripoli, epitomises the problems the NTC must resolve, as several of its residents have often expressed desire for revenge after their homes were looted and pillaged by former rebels who ousted Gaddafi.
But staunch supporters of the new rulers said the whole of Libya needed to be rebuilt and not just Bani Walid or Gaddafi's hometown Sirte.
"We have to rebuild Misrata, Ajdabiya, Zintan... all the cities... Sirte is just one of them. We have to be fair towards everybody," said Ali Sallabi, an influential Islamist leader who funded and armed anti-Gaddafi fighters during the rebellion.
Short link: