It is getting harder and harder for pro-Gaddafi apologists and propagandists to spin the core conflict in Lybia as anything other than what it has always been, a nationwide uprising against a brutal tyrant, as one can discern from this latest news, which was originally broken by AFP and has been picked up by the media globally.
Even so, many spinners will keep trying.
Levy with several tribal chieftans in Benghazi by Marc Roussel
From al Jazeera Live Blog of April 27:
Chiefs or representatives of 61 tribes from across Libya called on Wednesday for an end to Gaddafi's rule, in a joint statement released by French writer Bernard-Henri Levy.
"Faced with the threats weighing on the unity of our country, faced with the manoeuvres and propaganda of the dictator and his family, we solemnly declare: Nothing will divide us," said the text, drawn up in Benghazi on April 12.
"We share the same ideal of a free, democratic and united Libya," it said.
"The Libya of tomorrow, once the dictator has gone, will be a united Libya, with Tripoli as its capital and where we will at last be free to build a civil society according to our own wishes," it predicted.
A well-known intellectual in France, Levy has become an unofficial spokesman for the Libyan revolt in Paris and is credited with pressing President Nicolas Sarkozy to mobilise international political and military support for it.
He told the AFP news agency the statement had been prepared in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi, but had been circulated around the country, and had now been endorsed by many influential tribal leaders in areas where Gaddafi still holds sway.
He told the AFP news agency the statement had been prepared in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi, but had been circulated around the country, and had now been endorsed by many influential tribal leaders in areas where Gaddafi still holds sway.
"Each of the tribes in Libya is represented by at least a representative. In this list of 61 signatures, some tribes are represented 100 per cent, others are still divided," he said.
Levy has published the statement on the website of his magazine, La Regle du Jeu, including scans of the original handwritten signatures in Arabic (pictured below).
"We form, we the Libyans, a single and united tribe - the tribe of free Libyans, battling against oppression and the wicked genie of division," it reads, according to the French translation of the text.
