LIBYA: Officials say Kadafi not headed to Venezuela

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Venezuela’s foreign minister said he hoped for a ‘peaceful solution’ to the violence in Libya after a phone call between the two countries’ foreign ministers Monday, according to a statement the Caracas-based ministry provided to the Associated Press.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said in the statement that he spoke with Libyan counterpart Musa Kusa, who told him that longtime Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi remained in the country, contradicting ‘irresponsible comments’ by British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Monday.

Venezuela’s information minister, Andres Izarra, also denied suggestions Monday that Kadafi was headed to his country, according to the Associated Press.

Kusa told Maduro that Kadafi was in Libya’s capital ‘confronting the situation that’s gripping the country,’ according to the statement.

During the phone conversation, Maduro referred to ‘the historic friendship between the Venezuelan and Libyan people’ and told Kusa that he hoped ‘the Libyan people, exercising their sovereignty, find a peaceful solution to their difficulties.’

Maduro also condemned what the statement called ‘imperialist meddling’ during the recent unrest in the Middle East. Maduro ‘expressed his wishes that the Libyan people, exercising their sovereignty, find a peaceful solution to their difficulties, and that they preserve the integrity of the people and the Libyan nation without the meddling of imperialism which has seen its interests in the region affected in recent times,’ the statement said.

The communique said Maduro and Kusa agreed ‘to share firsthand information regarding the evolution of the situation’ in Libya.

-- Molly Hennessy-Fiske