Foreign Policy
In its 5 March 2011 "Founding Statement", the council stated, " request from the international community to fulfill its obligations to protect the Libyan people from any further genocide and crimes against humanity without any direct military intervention on Libyan soil." Ali Al-Issawi was designated the Council's foreign affairs spokesperson in March 2011. Mahmoud Jibril later replaced Ali Al-Issawi and was designated as the Head of International Affairs.
The NTC has also called on the international community to render assistance to its efforts to dislodge Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya since 1969, and his loyalists. Officials have asked for medical supplies, money, and weapons, among other forms of foreign aid. In late June 2011, it proposed using internationally based frozen assets belonging to Gaddafi and his inner circle as collateral for loans, with Finance Minister Ali Tarhouni warning that his government is virtually out of money. The NTC has previously asked for those assets to be unfrozen and transferred to Benghazi, a request officials of the Obama administration in the United States indicated they would try to fulfill.
NTC officials have said that they intend to reward countries that have been early to recognise the council as the legitimate representative of Libya, as well as countries that have been involved in the international military intervention to suppress Gaddafi's forces. Among the incentives the council has offered to these countries, which it considers to be allies, are favorable oil contracts and other economic ties. On 15 July 2011, a council spokesman told members of the Libya Contact Group meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, that his government would not forge any new oil contracts and that an elected government must be in place before new deals could be made.
After anti-Gaddafi forces stormed Tripoli, the Libyan capital city, the information manager at NTC-run oil firm AGOCO said on 22 August that once Libya resumed oil exports, its new government "may have some political issues with Russia, China and Brazil" and favor Western and Arab countries that supported the uprising against Gaddafi when awarding oil contracts. However, on 23 August, Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota said his government had been assured that if the NTC took power in Libya, "contracts will be respected" and Brazil would not be punished for its stance. On 1 September, an NTC representative in Paris claimed that the new Libyan government would not award oil contracts based on politics, though he said that a number of Western companies, including BP, Total, Eni, and "major American companies", had a particularly "good track record in the Libyan oil sector".
Read more about this topic: Foreign Relations Of Libya
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