20110505
reuters

PARIS (Reuters) - Securing financing for Libyan opposition rebels and facilitating contacts with defectors from Muammar Gaddafi's government will be the focus of Libya talks in Rome on Thursday, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said.

Juppe told France 24 television the meeting of the so-called "Contact Group" on Libya, including Western and Middle Eastern countries, the United Nations, the African Union and the Arab League, would discuss setting up a financing mechanism.

"It's not easy. There are Libyan assets that are frozen and for legal reasons unfreezing them is difficult," Juppe said.

The rebel national council has said it hopes for as much as $3 billion in credit from Western governments to help them meet pressing needs for food, medicine and state salaries.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said last month the Rome talks would look at ways to free assets belonging to Gaddafi and enabling oil from rebel-held areas to be sold.

Libya's two-month-old civil war is in stalemate as Gaddafi's better-equipped forces have halted a rebel advance to the west, but Juppe said coalition attacks on army targets in Tripoli would continue until there was a breakthrough. "There's no question of getting bogged down in Libya," he said.

Juppe said another aim of the Rome meeting was to build contacts with defectors from Gaddafi's government and officials who want to leave it. "There are a lot of officials from Tripoli who want to talk. We are going to try to coordinate," he said.

He said participants would also be asked to consider French President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to organise a separate conference in the weeks before a gathering of "friends" of Libya, including Gaddafi defectors and various political groups, to work on a political solution to the crisis.