Former prime minister says Libyan officials trying to negotiate with UK, France and US, as rebels outline ceasefire conditions

This article is more than 9 years old

This article is more than 9 years old

The regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has initiated a concerted effort to open lines of communication with western governments in an attempt to bring the conflict in the country to an end.

As fighting continues in Libya, the country's former prime minister Abdul Ati al-Obeidi told Channel 4: "We are trying to talk to the British, the French and the Americans to stop the killing of people. We are trying to find a mutual solution."

Obeidi's indication of the increased effort to make contact with western governments came as opposition leaders in the rebels' de facto capital of Benghazi laid out their own conditions for a ceasefire.

The initiatives on both sides appear to reflect an emerging stalemate between the forces and a growing war-weariness.

Obeidi's comments followed his confirmation that a meeting had taken place between a senior aide to Gaddafi's influential son Saif al-Islam and British officials on Wednesday in London, as revealed by the Guardian.

Mohammed Ismail's meeting with UK officials was also confirmed by a friend of his in Tripoli.

Ismail is a key fixer in the Gaddafi regime who has been used by the Gaddafi family to negotiate arms deals and he has considerable contacts in the west.

It has also emerged that British officials have been in contact with a number of Libyan officials, including Ismail, in recent weeks in behind-the-scenes diplomacy, according to a spokesman for David Cameron, who declined to give specific details. "We are sending them all one very clear message, which is that Gaddafi must go."

The spokesman stressed that Britain had not been involved in negotiating any possible trade-offs aimed at sealing Gaddafi's exit from power. "There are no deals," he said.

The disclosure that private conversations have been going on between western officials and their Libyan counterparts, even as the same governments have been bombing Libyan troops on the ground, have come in the wake of the defection of Gaddafi's most senior ally to the UK earlier this week, the former foreign minister and intelligence chief Moussa Koussa.

The comments made by Obeidi, an influential former diplomat who was a key negotiator of Libya's renunciation of its nuclear weapons programme, appear to verify claims made by the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, that she was aware that people close to Gaddafi were attempting to make contact.

His remarks emerged at the same time as a senior rebel spokesman laid out conditions for a ceasefire, the key demand being that Gaddafi pulls his military forces out of all of the country's cities and permits peaceful protests against his regime.

The conditions were announced by Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, head of the opposition's interim governing council, based in Benghazi, who spoke during a joint press conference with the United Nations envoy, Abdelilah al-Khatib.

Khatib is visiting Benghazi in the hope of reaching a political solution to the crisis in the north African nation.

Abdul-Jalil said the rebels' condition for a ceasefire was "that the Gaddafi brigades and forces withdraw from inside and outside Libyan cities to give freedom to the Libyan people to choose, and the world will see that they will choose freedom".