“We have hard evidence of deals going on between China and Qaddafi, and we have all the documents to prove it,” he said, adding that the rebels have other evidence, including documents and weapons found on the battlefield, showing that arms were supplied illegally to Colonel Qaddafi’s forces by numerous other governments or companies. “I can think of at least 10 off the top of my head,” he said.

Graeme Smith, a reporter for The Globe and Mail, said that the documents his newspaper posted were found by him in the trash in the Bab Akkarah neighborhood, where many Qaddafi regime officials lived. They were on the green letterhead of a government procurement department.

State Department, Pentagon and intelligence officials in Washington said Sunday that they were unaware of such dealings and would need more time to analyze the documents. A senior NATO diplomat in Brussels discounted the report as highly unlikely, but said he was not familiar with the documents cited in the article.

Members of the United Nations’ Libya sanctions committee said that nothing about arms dealings with China had been brought to their attention, and noted that France had been accused of air-dropping arms to some rebel units. For their part, rebels argued that the embargo resolution referred specifically to arming the Qaddafi government, not them.