Gadhafi: We Will Not Surrender

'We are not women,' he declares in broadcast statement
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 1, 2011 11:51 AM CDT
Moammar Gadhafi: We Will Not Surrender
Moammar Gadhafi in 2007.   (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte/file)

Rebels say (again) they are closing in on Moammar Gadhafi, but he's not talking (again) like a man on the brink of defeat. "The Libyan people cannot kneel, cannot surrender, we are not women," he said in a message broadcast on a Syria-based TV station. "Let there be a long fight and let Libya be engulfed in flames," he said, adding that the "balance of power is now leveled as all tribes are now armed," reports al-Jazeera.

The defiant statement comes as top international diplomats meet in Paris to discuss Libya's future and as rebels gave loyalists an extra week to surrender, notes the BBC. It also comes on the 42nd anniversary of the coup that brought Gadhafi to power. "There must be huge sacrifices for the sake of freedom," he said in the 10-minute message. "The traitors will come to an end and NATO now will collapse, and the traitors' loyalty to NATO will collapse." (More Moammar Gadhafi stories.)

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