“Misurata, we will never accept Mahmoud Jibril,” Mr. Benrasali, a spokesman for the Misurata fighters, said Sunday.

He faulted the prime minister for spending little time in Libya in the Qaddafi years and almost no time there during the revolt.

“He is a source of tension, and not a unifying figure at all,” Mr. Benrasali said. “He should do the honorable thing and just vanish.” Some in Misurata now want to charge Mr. Jibril with “treason,” Mr. Benrasali said, for weakening the transition by holding on to power.

Many in Misurata are now backing a native son for the post of prime minister: Abdul Rahman al-Swehli, a British-trained engineer from a prominent local family. “The next prime minister has to be a Libyan — a Libyan who doesn’t have a second passport, a Libyan who has lived in Libya for the last 42 years,” Mr. Benrasali said.

But fighters from the Nafusa Mountains — especially from the city of Zintan, which suffered its own brutal siege — want a greater role in the cabinet as well. Noting that the current council president, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, comes from Al Baida in the east, they say that other top posts should go to westerners — from Misurata or the mountains — who they say deserve credit for ending Colonel Qaddafi’s hold on Tripoli.

“Like Misurata, we are the ones who paid the highest price,” said one council member from the mountains, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private talks. “So there is no question who is going to take the prime minister, the defense minister, the interior minister, the foreign minister, the justice minister — during this transitional phase, they should certainly go to the people who carried the revolution.”

Meanwhile, residents of Benghazi, the largest city in the east, noted that they had started the revolt and had worked for months to supply weapons and money by boat and plane to rebels in Misurata and the Nafusa Mountains. “Benghazi carried the weight of the country through this difficult period,” said Shamsiddin Abdul Molah, a spokesman for the council.