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Venezuela says Gaddafi accepts Chavez plan: report

By on March 3, 2011

Both Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and the president of the Arab League agreed to a peace plan from Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez to end the crisis in the North African country, a news network said on Thursday.

Chavez spoke to Gaddafi on Tuesday and laid out his proposal to seek a negotiated solution to the violence in Libya, Venezuela’s Information Minister Andres Izarra said, without giving more details.

A senior government official contacted by Reuters said he did not know what Gaddafi had said about Chavez’s idea to send representatives from several countries to Libya.

However, news network Al Jazeera said in a broadcast that during the call Gaddafi had accepted the plan, which would involve a commission from Latin America, Europe and the Middle East trying to reach a negotiated outcome between the Libyan leader and rebel forces.

Citing senior government sources, Al Jazeera’s Caracas Correspondent Dima Khatib said via her Twitter feed that Venezuela’s foreign minister had spoken with Arab League President Amr Moussa who also agreed to the plan.

Earlier in the day Moussa took a tough line on Libya, saying the Arab League could impose a “no fly zone” there to stop blood being spilled.

Chavez says the international community should seek a non-military solution to the conflict and accuses the United States of exaggerating Libya’s problems to justify an invasion.

A former soldier who survived massive protests and a coup against him in 2002, Chavez is a close friend of Gaddafi and has visited him several times.

On Thursday, Libyan rebels repulsed a land and air offensive by Gaddafi’s forces as the defiant leader warned foreign powers of “another Vietnam” if they intervened in his country’s popular uprising.

Rebels in their eastern bastion of Benghazi called for U.N.-backed air strikes to halt attacks by African mercenaries they say Gaddafi is using against his own people.

Reuters.

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