Source: The Guardian

Secret documents detail clandestine lobbying of Nato and even Obama following fear of full-scale US invasion

Luke Harding in Tripoli | Thursday 25 August 2011 21.19 BST

The Gaddafi regime carried out an extraordinary clandestine lobbying operation to try to stop Nato's bombardment of Libya, and believed the western allies were likely to launch a full-scale invasion in "either late September or October".

Secret documents in Tripoli seen by the Guardian reveal the desperate attempts made by the Libyan government in its final months to influence US and world opinion. It approached key international opinion formers from the US president Barack Obama downwards.

The regime tried to persuade the Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich – a well-known rebel who voted against Nato military action in Libya, and opposed the Iraq war – to visit Tripoli as part of a hastily arranged "peace mission". The Libyan government offered to pay all Kucinich's costs related to the trip, including "travel expenses and accommodation".

On 22 June a letter sent to Libya's prime minister, Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi, by a US-based lobbyist for the regime, Sufyan Omeish, noted that Kucinich was "concerned that his personal safety in Tripoli could not be guaranteed". He preferred to conduct meetings with regime officials outside Libya. The plan was for Kucinich to meet "senior Libyan officials, including Gaddafi". The proposed trip never took place. Kucinich visited Syria instead.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/2...

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A rebel fighter poses for a photo as he sits on a two seater couch that framed by golden mermaid with the face of Aisha Gadhafi
the daughter of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in her house in Tripoli, Libya, Wednesday, Aug. 24. A defiant Moammar Gadhafi
vowed Wednesday to fight on "until victory or martyrdom," as rebel fighters tried to end scattered attacks by regime loyalists
in the nervous capital. http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/...