ABU DHABI: The United Arab Emirates Sunday recognized the National Transitional Council in Benghazi of the rebels battling to oust Muammar Gaddafi, the official WAM news agency reported. The decision to recognize the NTC as the “sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people” was announced by Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahayan, who said the UAE would soon open a provisional office in Benghazi. “The NTC has, in practice, become the representative of Libya and the Libyan people. Therefore, the United Arab Emirates will create relations with it at government level in all questions concerning Libya,” the minister said. The UAE move comes after a meeting Thursday in Abu Dhabi of the contact group on Libya. The federation becomes the 12th nation to recognize the NTC, after Australia, Britain, France, Gambia, Italy, Jordan, Malta, Qatar, Senegal, Spain and the United States. In Tripoli, government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim Sunday reiterated that the regime rejected any talks about Gaddafi leaving the country. “We reject any dialogue on the subject of the departure of the leader, Muammar Gaddafi,” Ibrahim told reporters in Tripoli. “No one has the right to demand that the leader stand down. No one can come here with a plan that includes his departure,” he said, adding that such an idea was “immoral, illegal and has no sense. Meanwhile, the president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) Kirsan Ilyumzhinov said Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi told him over a game of chess in Tripoli on Sunday he had no plans to stand down or leave his country. As fighting between Gaddafi's forces and Libyan insurgents raged across western Libya, the Russian eccentric who once claimed he hosted extraterrestrials, also sat down for a game of chess with Gaddafi's eldest son Muhammad and the two played the Sicilian defense, Russia's Interfax news agency said. “The meeting [with Muammar Gaddafi] lasted around two hours, we played some chess with Gaddafi,” Ilyumzhinov, who is on a visit to Tripoli in his capacity as FIDE president, told Interfax. “ Gaddafi stated that he is not going to leave Libya, stressing that it is his motherland and a land where his children and grandchildren died. He also said that he does not understand which post he needs to step down from.” “I am neither premier nor president nor king. I do not hold any post in Libya and therefore I have no position which I should give up,” Ilyumzhinov quoted Gaddafi as telling him. Ilyumzhinov, who also met with foreign and education ministers, said he saw a lot of destruction in Tripoli. He expressed his condolences to Gaddafi over the death of his son and grandchildren and said he was shown a house hit by five bombs where the leader's family members died. Ilyumzhinov was the head of Russia's Buddhist region of Kalmykia between 1993 and 2010. He famously claimed that he had met aliens on the balcony of his apartment in Moscow, prompting demands to explain his behaviour. The West is involved in the bombing campaign against Gaddafi's forces, a conflict Russia has offered to mediate. The Kremlin's special representative to Africa, Mikhail Margelov, visited rebels in Libya's east this week and is now preparing a trip to Tripoli. Margelov said he would be ready to meet with Gaddafi but had not so far received any such orders from the Kremlin, which has repeatedly called on the Libyan leader to stand down for the sake of peace of the country.
