Gaddafi: ‘All my people love me’

Col Gaddafi is trying to shore up support in and around the capital

Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has told the BBC he is loved by all his people and has denied there have been any protests in Tripoli.

Col Gaddafi said that his people would die to protect him.

He laughed at the suggestion he would leave Libya and said he felt betrayed by leaders who had urged him to leave.

Earlier world governments condemned attacks on Libyan civilians, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying Col Gaddafi must “go now”.

The EU on Monday imposed sanctions including an arms embargo, asset freeze and travel ban on Col Gaddafi and his close entourage.

Col Gaddafi was speaking in an interview with the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen in Tripoli.

Col Gaddafi said the people who had come on to the streets were under the influence of drugs supplied by al-Qaeda.

He said those people had seized weapons and that his supporters were under orders not to shoot back.

Our correspondent says the colonel was relaxed as he talked in a restaurant overlooking the port in Tripoli, before departing at high speed in a motorcade of dozens of vehicles.

Col Gaddafi is facing a massive challenge to his 41-year rule, with protesters in control of towns in the east.

Unrest also continues in and around Tripoli, with reports of an anti-Gaddafi protest in a suburb of the capital as well as fighting in nearby Misrata and an attack by air force jets on ammunition dumps in the east of the country.

Foreign ministers who had gathered at a UN human rights conference in Geneva called earlier for Col Gaddafi to go.

Mrs Clinton accused Col Gaddafi and his followers of using “mercenaries and thugs” to attack unarmed civilians, and of executing soldiers who refused to turn their guns on fellow citizens.

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