Celebrations in Tripoli last night: photo - EPA/Sabri Elmhedwi
Buzek said he will be travelling to the North African country at the weekend.
“I will be able to discuss those matters with our partners in Libya as of next Saturday. I am happy I will be visiting a country fully liberated from a dictator who has imposed his iron fist for more than 40 years. Now Libya can truly turn the page,” he said.
European Council President, Herman van Rompuy, and European Commission president Josè Manuel Barroso issued a joint statement saying that, “the death of Muammar Gaddafi marks the end of an era of despotism and repression from which the Libyan people have suffered for too long.”
“We call on the National Transitional Council to pursue a broad-based reconciliation process that reaches out to all Libyans and enables a democratic, peaceful and transparent transition,” they said.
Poland's Foreign Ministry issued a statement yesterday evening saying: “We congratulate the Libyan people on bringing to an ultimate end the dictatorship of many years’ standing.”
“Since the outbreak of the revolution in Libya, Poland has been supporting the ambitions of the Libyan people to live in freedom and democracy,” the statement by Foreign Ministry spokesman Marcin Bosacki continues.
“In May 2011, Radosław Sikorski was the first Foreign Minister of the Western world to have visited the capital of the authorities of the new Libya in Benghazi.”
“We hope that the last loyalists of the former regime will now abandon resistance and a new representative transitional government will soon be established and a democratic state built. Poland—as over the past months—wants to cooperate closely with Libya.”
End of a despot
It has emerged that NATO planes bombed a convoy of around 40 vehicles early yesterday morning in Sirte, Gaddafi's last stronghold.
“But [NATO] didn't tell us Gaddafi was among them,” one fighter from the National Transitional Council told the Al-Jazeera TV channel.
“The Gaddafi loyalists fled and went to hide in holes and pipes. After we arrived in the area a clash broke out lasting six hours. Some of the loyalists began to come out from their hiding places. The last to come out was Gaddafi himself. He did not resist.”
Another spokesman for the NTC claimed that Gaddafi was hit in the head by a bullet as more fighting between loyalists and rebels broke out after the arrest of the deposed dictator.
Mobile phone footage, however, shows that Gaddafi was being beaten and kicked after his arrest, however. (pg)