Libyan rebel council vows democracy, to keep oil deals

PARIS (Reuters) - Libya's rebel national council wants to establish a secular democracy that would respect oil contracts awarded under Muammar Gaddafi if it toppled the Libyan leader, members of the council said in Paris.

Ali Zeidan, one of 31 members of the Libyan National Council, told reporters the rebels could overcome Gaddafi's forces in ten days if the coalition of Western powers continued its U.N.-mandated strikes.

Allied warplanes silenced Gaddafi's artillery and tanks besieging the rebel-held town of Misrata Wednesday after a U.S. admiral warned the Libyan leader's armor was now in the cross-hairs.

"We want the elimination of the Gaddafi regime to be done by the Libyans themselves," Zeidan said in Paris late Tuesday, adding that he wanted the international community to train and arm the rebel fighters.

"The wish of all the Libyan people is that Gaddafi stays alive and is then arrested and tried for all his crimes against humanity," he told reporters.

Mansour Saif al Nasr, the council's European Union spokesman, said the rebels wanted the coalition to continue their bombardment of Gaddafi's tanks and heavy artillery to ease their way back westwards.

Once Libyan territory is "liberated," the council would give way to a constituent assembly that would draft a constitution and establish a democratic and secular state, the 60-year-old former diplomat turned businessman said.

Al Nasr, who has been in exile since Gaddafi's 1969 revolution, said elections would be "free and transparent."

Foreign oil companies have billions of dollars worth of assets at stake in Libya and Zeidan promised those contracts would be honored if power changed hands.

"We will respect the agreements that were signed with other countries, but certainly in the future, we will consider the countries that helped us," he said.

(Writing by John Irish; Editing by Matthew Jones)