ABU DHABI (AFP) – Major powers met Thursday to map out what Washington calls an inevitable "post-Kadhafi Libya" as hundreds of millions of dollars poured into an international fund to aid rebels.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, meanwhile, urged Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi to step down, "the sooner the better," as he became the first head of state to visit the rebels' bastion of Benghazi in eastern Libya.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and counterparts from NATO and other countries participating in air strikes against Kadhafi's forces held their third round of Libya talks in the United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi.
"Kadhafi's days are numbered. We are working with our international partners through the UN to plan for the inevitable: a post-Kadhafi Libya," Clinton told participants, according to her prepared remarks distributed by aides.
"Time is on our side," the chief US diplomat said, adding the international military, economic and political pressure was mounting on the Libyan colonel who has been in power for four decades.
"In the days ahead," she said, "we have to coordinate the many plans taking shape and work closely" with the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) and Libya's people.
"Each of these efforts helps us to protect the Libyan people and lay the groundwork for a unified, democratic, and peaceful future," she said.
But Clinton offered no direct US financial contribution to the rebels, pledging instead another "$26.5 million to help all the victims of this conflict, including Libyan refugees."
Such money will likely be distributed through relief agencies.
US officials said the United States would urge Arab countries to offer more funds to the rebel administration.
The Obama administration, already criticised by some domestic opponents for allowing Britain and France to take the lead in the NATO mission after an initial US blitz, appears to want others to take the lead in offering financial aid to the rebels.
Libya's former foreign minister and envoy to the United Nations, Abdurrahman Shalgam, told journalists the NTC needs at least three billion dollars over the next four months for current expenses.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Rome would provide the rebel council with loans and fuel products worth 300 to 400 million euros ($438 million to $584 million).
His French counterpart, Alain Juppe, said his government would release 290 million euros ($420.9 million) of frozen Libyan funds for the benefit of the NTC.
A member of the NTC said on the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi meeting that an international fund aimed at helping Libya's rebels had "become operational" from Thursday.
A State Department official later reporters "we have got commitments of something about 300 million dollars that came out of today's meeting," including 180 million dollars from Kuwait and 100 million from Qatar.
The opposition has complained that it has seen nothing concrete since the contact group last met on May 5 in Rome when the powers agreed to set up a fund to aid the rebels and promised to tap frozen Kadhafi assets.
A US official told reporters on condition of anonymity on Wednesday that Washington could not determine whether the NTC was "ready to assume complete control" even if Kadhafi's fall was only a matter of time.
He also cautioned there was no international consensus over when Kadhafi should leave power, where he should go, or even whether he should leave Libya.
In Benghazi, Senegal's president issued an appeal to Kadhafi as he paid a visit to the rebel capital, saying: "I look at you in the eyes... the sooner you go, the better."
On the battlefront, explosions continued to rock the Libyan capital.
Four blasts shook Tripoli on Thursday afternoon, an AFP journalist said, although unable to pinpoint their location. Overnight, other explosions echoed through the city from near Kadhafi's compound, an AFP correspondent reported.
The Western alliance said it carried out 47 strike sorties on Wednesday, hitting a vehicle storage facility in Tripoli and a missile storage facility, a missile site, a command and control facility, a tank, and four armoured fighting vehicles just outside.
NATO said it also hit an electronic warfare vehicle and a military training camp near Libya's third-largest city Misrata.
The Mediterranean city is the most significant rebel-held enclave in western Libya and a rebel spokesman said up to 3,000 Kadhafi troops attacked it in a three-pronged movement from the south, west and east on Wednesday.
Twelve people were killed and 33 wounded in the fighting in which Kadhafi's forces deployed gunships, tanks and Grad rocket launchers as well as mortars, the spokesman, Hassan al-Galai, told AFP by telephone from the city.
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