TRIPOLI: Libya’s new leaders won massive international support for  their plans to rebuild the war-shattered country but faced threats of a long guerrilla war from defeated strongman Muammar Qaddafi on Friday.

“Prepare yourselves for a gang and guerrilla war, for urban warfare and popular resistance in every town . . . to defeat the enemy everywhere,” Qaddafi warned from his hideout in one of two audio tapes aired on Arab satellite television.

Boosted by promises of billions of dollars in cash from unfrozen assets of the Qaddafi regime, the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) prepared to put into practice a road map for bringing democracy to Libya.

A council tasked with drafting a constitution for Libya should be elected within eight months and a president should be elected within 20 months, the NTC’s representative in Britain, Guma al-Gamaty, told the British Broadcasting Corp. also on Friday.

He said that the process of transition was already under way and the NTC would move properly to Tripoli from its original base in Benghazi within a few days.

For the first eight months, the council would lead Libya, at the end of which time a council of about 200 people should have been directly elected, Gamaty said, referring to plans drawn up in March and refined last month.

“This council . . . will take over and oversee the drafting of a democratic constitution, that should be debated and then brought to a referendum,” he said.

Within a year of the council being put in place, final parliamentary and presidential elections should take place.

Senior envoys from more than 60 countries met the leaders of the rebellion in Paris on Thursday to endorse the fledgling new regime and offer practical support.

Path of reconciliation
But they also put the NTC on notice to pursue a path of reconciliation.

The Paris guestlist was a victory in itself for the NTC, as once-skeptical Russia and China and Libya’s reluctant neighbor Algeria agreed to back the new administration.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the rebels’ most prominent backer from the outset, said that about $15 billion had already been unfrozen and more would follow.

Speaking alongside the NTC leaders, Sarkozy urged them to begin a “process of reconciliation and forgiveness.”

NTC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil said that the Libyan people “proved their courage and their determination” in their fight to topple Qaddafi, but he also pleaded for stability.

“Now everything is in your hands,” Jalil said in a message to the Libyan people.

“It’s up to you to accomplish what we promised: stability, peace and reconciliation,” he added.
Qaddafi, however, was having none of it.

“If they want a long battle, let it be long. If Libya burns, who will be able to govern it? Let it burn,” the fugitive strongman said in the first of his two statements broadcast on friendly television channels 42 years to the day since he toppled the monarchy and seized power.

“The aim is to kill the enemy wherever he may be, whether he be Libyan or foreigner,” he added in a relatively calm tone in his second message.

“Qaddafi’s speech is a sign of misery and despair,” Ahmed Darrat, who is overseeing the interior ministry until a new government is elected, told Agence France-Presse in Tripoli.

His foes say that Qaddafi and his son Seif al-Islam may be in the town of Bani Walid, southeast of the capital and still held by loyalist troops, where some clashes have taken place.

But the NTC has put its assault on the centers still held by pro-Qaddafi forces, in particular his hometown of Sirte, on hold until September 10 to try to negotiate a peaceful end to the six-and-a-half month conflict.

AFP