Gadhafi family demands body; NATO ends Libya war

卡扎菲家庭要求返还卡扎菲的身体;北约利比亚战争结束.
* Arguments over disposal of body held in market cold store
* Reuters reporter sees body with bullet in side of head
* New leaders, Western backers hail dawn of new Libya
* Challenge now to impose order on array of armed groups 
MISRATA, Libya - NATO called an end to its air war in Libya, and the clan of Muammar Gadhafidemanded a chance to bury the body that lay on display in a meat locker after a death asbrutal and chaotic as his 42-year rule.
In a statement on a Syria-based pro-Gadhafi television station, his family asked for the bodiesof Gadhafi, his son Mo'tassim, and others who were killed on Thursday by fighters who overranhis hometown Sirte.
"We call on the UN, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and Amnesty International toforce the [National] Transitional Council to hand over the martyears' bodies to our tribe in Sirteand to allow them to perform their burial ceremony in accordance with Islamic customs andrules," the statement said.
At an understated and sparsely-attended news conference late on Friday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance had taken a preliminary decisionto call a halt to Operation Unified Protector on October 31.
Like other Western officials, Rasmussen expressed no regrets in public about the gruesomedeath of Gadhafi, who was captured alive by the forces of the National Transitional Council butwas brought dead to a hospital.
"We mounted a complex operation with unprecedented speed and conducted it with thegreatest of care," Rasmussen said. "I'm very proud of what we have achieved."
The NATO operation, officially intended to protect civilians, effectively ended on Thursday withFrench warplanes blasting Gadhafi's convoy as he and others tried to escape a final stand inSirte.
Gadhafi was captured wounded but alive hiding in a drain under a road. The world has sinceseen grainy film of him being roughed up by his captors while he pleads with them to respecthis rights.
NTC officials have said Gadhafi later died of wounds in the ambulance, but the ambulancedriver, Ali Jaghdoun, told Reuters that Gadhafi was already dead when he picked up the body.
"I didn't try to revive him because he was already dead," Jaghdoun said, in testimony that addsgreater weight to the widespread assumption that Gadhafi was lynched.
The U.N. human rights arm said an investigation was needed to into whether he was summarilyexecuted. The interim leaders have yet to decide what to do with the corpse.
BURIAL DISPUTE
In Misrata, a local commander, Addul-Salam Eleiwa, showed off the body, torso bare, on amattress inside a metal-lined cold-store by a market on Friday. There was a bullet hole in hishead.
"He will get his rights, like any Muslim. His body will be washed and treated with dignity. I expecthe will be buried in a Muslim cemetery within 24 hours," he said.
Dozens of people, many with cellphone cameras, filed in to see that he was dead.
"There's something in our hearts we want to get out," said Abdullah al-Suweisi, 30, as hewaited. "It is the injustice of 40 years. There is hatred inside. We want to see him."
In Tripoli, Gadhafi's death prompted a carnival-like celebration, with fireworks, a bouncy castleand candy floss for the children. "Muammar, bad," one small girl said to foreign journalists inEnglish. "Boom boom."
"For some people from outside Libya it could look wrong that we are celebrating a death withour children," said one man with a child on his shoulders. "But it was 42 years with the devil."
RISKS OF DIVISION
Saif al-Islam, Gadhafi's son and heir-apparent remains at large, believed by NTC officials tohave escaped from besieged Sirte and headed for a southern border.
Without the glue of hatred for Gadhafi and his tribe to unite the factions, some fear a descentinto the kind of strife that bedevils Iraq after Saddam Hussein. Optimists say that so far Libya'snew rulers have quarreled but not fought.
"Can an inclusive, effective national government be formed? Yes, if factions can avoid fighting,"Jon Marks, chairman of Britain's Cross Border Information consultancy said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the NTC had promised toexplain how Gadhafi was killed.
One sign of a move towards normalcy was the United Nations Security Council beginning talkson lifting the no-fly-zone imposed by resolution 1973 of March 17. Envoys expected the flyingban, designed to protect civilians, would be ended after consultations with Libya's new rulers. 


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