U.N. seeks deal to allow food, medicine into Libya

TRIPOLI/GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations is negotiating with Libya's government, rebels and NATO to stop fighting for up to three days to allow food and medical supplies to reach civilians, its envoy said on Wednesday.

Panos Moumtzis, humanitarian coordinator for Libya, said he would also seek security guarantees for U.N. aid workers to reach the rebel-held city of Misrata and the Western Mountains in talks with authorities in the Libyan capital on Friday.

Misrata is a key battleground in the three-month-old war in which rebels fighting to topple Muammar Gaddafi have seized control of the oil-producing east of the country, aided by a NATO bombing campaign to enforce a U.N. mandate.

The war is deadlocked on its main front but fighting flared again in the besieged port city in western Libya and seven people were killed, most of them rebel fighters, in clashes on Tuesday with government forces, a hospital doctor said.

Moumtzis said the pause could last one to three days. While not a formal cease-fire, it would allow for the evacuation of migrants, wounded and others wishing to leave areas riddled by fighting.

"The humanitarian pause is driven by humanitarian principles and the need to be able to provide urgently needed life-saving assistance to the civilian population," he told a news conference, declining to give a target start date for the pause.

The United Nations withdrew its international staff from Tripoli on May 1 after its offices were ransacked on the day Libya said Gaddafi's youngest son and three grandchildren were killed in a NATO air strike.

JOURNALISTS SAID FREED

The war's diplomatic fallout intensified. Tunisia threatened to report Tripoli to the U.N. Security Council if it fired into Tunisian territory again, after government shells landed across the frontier near the Dehiba-Wazzin crossing on Tuesday.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, on Wednesday said Libya must abide by its agreements as a U.N. member and not dismiss international efforts to bring Gaddafi and others to justice.

Moreno-Ocampo requested arrest warrants on Monday for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and spy chief Abdullah al-Senussi, who is Gaddafi's brother-in-law, on charges of crimes against humanity -- a request Tripoli denounced.

"I wish to remind you that the situation in Libya was referred to the Office of the Prosecutor by the United Nations Security Council," Moreno-Ocampo said in a letter to Libyan foreign minister Abdelati Obeidi which he released to the media.

Libya freed U.S. reporters Clare Gillis and James Foley, Spanish photographer Manu Brabo and another journalist on Wednesday, a Libyan government spokesman said.

The four were shown being allowed to go free at a hotel in the Libyan capital. Spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said they could stay in Tripoli and keep reporting if they wanted.

Meanwhile, Libyan rebels and a Tunisian security source said the head of Libya's National Oil Corporation, Shokri Ghanem, had defected and fled to Tunisia. If confirmed the defection would undermine Gaddafi's efforts to cling to power.

Ghanem, 68, is an internationally respected technocrat and former prime minister credited with liberalising Libya's economy and energy sector. Tripoli said on Tuesday there was no sign he had defected.

BORDER REOPENS

At least four Russian-made Grad rockets fired from Libya landed inside Tunisia, according to a Reuters reporter at the scene on Tuesday.

Rocket attacks by government troops forced Libyan rebels to pull back briefly from the Dehiba-Wazin border crossing, but they ended the day in control of it despite a sustained bombardment that killed three rebels and wounded several.

A Reuters reporter at the crossing on Wednesday morning said the shelling had stopped and the border had reopened.

Farmers were crossing over from Libya to take livestock to a market on the Tunisian side, while a Tunisian military helicopter was making passes around the area.

The border crossing is a lifeline for rebels in the Western Mountains region front, allowing food, medicine and fuel to reach rebel-held towns on the mountain plateau, and ambulances to take casualties to hospital in Tunisia.

Despite the front's fighting, a rebel military victory seems a distant prospect and many pin their hopes on a collapse of central power in Tripoli driven by disaffection and defections.

(Reporting by Joseph Nasr, Matt Robinson, Sylvia Westall, David Brunnstrom, Tarek Amara and Allan Dowd; writing by Matthew Bigg; editing by Maria Golovnina)

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