Forces loyal to Muammar Gadafy may fight on even if the deposed Libyan leader is captured, and Nato will maintain air strikes against them as long as they threaten civilians, the US ambassador to Nato said.
Nato officials say they have no information as to Col Gadafy's whereabouts and that the alliance has not been tracking his movements, given that its UN mandate is limited to the protection of civilians, rather than targeting individuals.
US ambassador Ivo Daalder told a news briefing today the deposed Libyan leader's capture might not signal the end of the campaign of air strikes Nato took over on March 31st.
"We will maintain the operation as long as the regime or its elements continue to pose a threat to civilians," he said.
A senior Nato diplomat said Nato's operational mandate, which expires this month, would be extended as necessary.
Elsewhere, interim prime minister Mahmoud Jibril called for unity. "This is a stage where we have to unify and be together," Mr Jibril said, noting Col Gadafy still had bastions of support, two weeks after Tripoli fell. "Once the battle is finished . . . the political game can start.
"If we discover that we are not on common ground, then I will retreat and leave it to others who may be more capable of taking part in this experiment," he said.
Col Gadafy has not been seen in public since June and his whereabouts have been a particular mystery since rebel fighters overran his Tripoli headquarters two weeks ago, finding that the main leadership had disappeared.
He resurfaced on the airwaves early today to insist he was still in Libya to fight on, but he offered no clues as to his location.
On Thursday, forces of Libya's new government tightened a siege on the tribal bastion of Bani Walid, where some suspect he and two of his sons may be sheltering.
Officials from the interim ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) have also dispatched envoys to neighbouring Niger to try to stop Col Gadafy and his entourage evading justice by fleeing across the largely unguarded southern desert frontier.
The United States says it has no information to indicate Col Gadafy has left Libya but has contacted the governments of Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Burkina Faso to urge them to secure their borders and to detain and disarm Gadafy officials.
Libya's transition government sent a column of extra fighters towards the tribal bastion of Bani Walid overnight.
NTC officials near Bani Walid in the north said they believed two of Col Gadafy's sons and possibly the leader himself were inside the town. "That would explain why Bani Walid is resisting," NTC negotiator Abdallah Kanshil said of reports of Col Gadafy's presence in the town. "His two sons are definitely there."
The former Libyan leader and his son Saif al-Islam are wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Revelations of the extent to which US and British officials were until recently co-operating with Col Gadafy - once a pariah in the West but rehabilitated by Washington and London in the past decade – have emerged.
Papers found by Reuters in Tripoli showed a British arm of US-based General Dynamics was modernising tanks and troop carriers for a feared brigade led by Col Gadafy's son Khamis, as recently as late January.
Reuters