Anti-Gaddafi fighters demand role in the new Libya

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - A group of the fighters who ended Muammar Gaddafi's rule said on Saturday they were being sidelined in the new Libya, underlining the tensions between competing interests as the country forms a new government.

After 42 years of Gaddafi's autocratic rule, Libya has become a patchwork of regional factions, interest groups and rival ideologies, all jockeying for power and a share of the country's oil wealth.

One of those groups is the "revolutionaries," who fought Gaddafi's forces in the six-month conflict and now say they are being squeezed out by opportunists, politicians and returning exiles who never set foot on the battlefield.

"We reach out to the people and to the head of the government to reiterate our demands: 'No to marginalising the revolutionaries, no to the foreign agendas'," Bashir Thaelba, a field commander, told a Tripoli news conference.

"The revolutionaries have the right to take part in the government, its institutions and its embassies abroad."

"No to all crawlers and flatterers whether they are civilians or military officers. Yes to the freemen. Yes to the revolutionary officers. No to the security bodies in the absence of the revolutionaries."

The statement was issued in the name of a group called "Union for the various revolutionary brigades and military groups of Libya," but it was not clear who it represents.

The "revolutionaries" never formed into a national entity. They instead fought as small units who declared their loyalty to the town where they were based.

GADDAFI'S SON A BARGAINING CHIP

Thaelba is from Zintan, power base for one of the regional factions which enhanced its status on Saturday by capturing Saif al-Islam, the only one of Muammar Gaddafi's sons who was not accounted for.

Zintan is likely to use Saif al-Islam, who is wanted for trial by the International Criminal Court, as a bargaining chip in the contest between rival groups for power.

"The revolutionaries have shown day after day that they are capable of building a nation and of trying its criminals," Osama al-Juwaily, head of Zintan's military council, said after Saif al-Islam was brought the town.

Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib, himself a former exile, faces the difficult task of forming a new government which will balance the interests of the competing groups.

Diplomats say that Keib may try to postpone any disputes about sharing power by naming a government of technocrats which will run the country until elections can be held to determine the country's future shape.

An official in the interim government, the National Transitional Council (NTC), told Reuters that Keib would keep three of the serving ministers but replace the rest.

The ones who will remain are Education Minister Suleiman Al Saheli, Communications and Transport Minister Anwar Al Feituri, and Electricity Minister Awad Ebraik Ibrahim, according to the NTC official, who did not want to be identified.

(Additional reporting by Hisham El-Dani; Writing by Christian Lowe)