African Union meets for crucial Libya peace talks

South African President Jacob Zuma (R) chairs an African Union (AU) meeting on Libya in Pretoria on Sunday.NEW: South Africa's president says a U.N. resolution's goal was not "political assassination"Human rights groups want the African Union to prioritize the issue of civilian casualtiesLibya says latest round of NATO strikes have killed civiliansNATO said there is no indication that it did so

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- The African Union attempted Sunday to map a road to peace in Libya, despite a previous failed effort to end hostilities between Moammar Gadhafi's forces and rebels seeking to oust the Libyan leader.

The meeting follows claims a day earlier by the Libyan government that NATO warplanes bombed a bakery and a restaurant in a key oil refinery town east of Tripoli, a charge the alliance has countered.

South African President Jacob Zuma said continued bombing by NATO and its allies was a "concern," since protecting the Libyan people was the intention behind a U.N. resolution authorizing the use of force in Libya.

"The intention was not to authorize a campaign for regime change or political assassination," he said in his opening remarks at a meeting of the African Union's special committee on Libya.

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The committee, established in March, convened in Pretoria, South Africa, to discuss avenues to end the months-long fighting that has gripped the nation and left tens of thousands dead.

Ahead of the meeting, human rights activists urged the African Union to prioritize the issue of the plight of civilians caught in armed conflicts, including Libya.

Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have blamed the Gadhafi regime for violations of human rights, including indiscriminate fire on civilians, the use of internationally banned cluster bombs and the torture and executions of captured fighters.

On Sunday, an International Committee of the Red Cross ship arrived in Tripoli from the rebel stronghold of Benghazi with about 100 people on board. It was the second time in a week that the ICRC has reunited friends and families between the the eastern opposition-controlled city and the western regime-controlled city.

Over the past three months, members of the African Union's Special Committee on Libya have met with Gadhafi and opposition leaders. The special committee includes representatives from Mauritania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Uganda and South Africa.

Gadhafi has been a strong supporter of the African Union and has channeled large sums of money its way. Libya also holds a seat on the 15-member Peace and Security Council, which is headed by Ramtane Lamamra.

As such, opposition leaders had voiced doubt that any mediation involving that multinational group would end the conflict in a way that would satisfy their goals, which include Gadhafi's ouster.

In April, the African Union attempted to broker peace between Gadhafi and the rebels. In the agreement, the African Union said Gadhafi had agreed in principle to stop all hostilities and allow outside forces to help keep the peace.

The rebels rejected the proposal, saying it did not address whether Gadhafi would step down nor did it provide any solution to the violence against the Libyan people.

The proposal did not address whether Gadhafi would step down, nor was it binding.

NATO began bombing military targets in March after the U.N. Security Council issued a resolution authorizing force by whatever means necessary, with the exception of a ground invasion, to protect civilians.

Libya accused NATO on Saturday of killing civilians in airstrikes, with NATO responding that it struck key command-and-control centers. The alliance said there was "no indication of civilian casualties in connection with these strikes."

Gadhafi's forces have occupied buildings in an abandoned area of al-Brega from where they are launching attacks on civilians, a NATO statement said. The alliance monitored the buildings and said it determined they were clear military targets.

"This continues to show Gadhafi's reprehensible tactics of placing military assets and operations at the heart of civilian neighborhoods," said Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, NATO commander for the Libya campaign.

"We have meticulously monitored these developments for a significant period and it was time to remove this threat," he said.

Al-Brega is a key oil refinery town about 500 miles east of Tripoli that has been the scene of heavy fighting between pro-Gadhafi forces and rebel fighters.

Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, a spokesman and deputy chairman of the opposition's Transitional National Council, said Gadhafi bears a lot of the responsibility for civilian casualties as the Libyan leader keeps weapons near where people live.

Also Saturday, Libyan state TV said NATO strikes hit Gharyan, a city in the west. The report cited an unnamed military source who said a number of people were killed and wounded in the attack. CNN cannot independently confirm the claim.

CNN's Raja Razek, Yousuf Basil and Ingrid Formanek and journalist David Adams contributed to this report.

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Peres: Need for peace deal with Palestinians is 'urgent'

Jerusalem (CNN) -- Israel's president is calling for an "urgent" peace deal with Palestinians, saying time is running out for an agreement.

"It is very urgent," President Shimon Peres told CNN in an exclusive interview Sunday. "I think neither side has much time. We have to act dynamically."

The Palestinian Authority has said that, in the absence of peace talks, it will ask the United Nations to recognize an independent Palestinian state in September.

But the 87-year-old Israeli statesman warned the Palestinian leadership not to make a "mistake" of declaring independence outside of a peace deal.

"If you go for a declaration, you have a declaration. You won't have a change in the situation. It's not enough to declare, you have to agree," he said.

Peres told CNN he believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government is "trying to arrive at peace."

He repeated his call for a two-state solution, saying the failure to reach a deal threatens the Jewish character of the Israeli state.

"If there will be one state without a clear majority or an un-Jewish majority, that is against everything we are trying to work for," Peres said.

CNN's interview with Peres was conducted ahead of this week's Israeli Presidential Conference, which Peres is hosting for the third time. It will include leaders in industry, government, education, science and entertainment from around the world.

In a wide-ranging speech last month, U.S. President Barack Obama renewed his push for a two-state solution, declaring that the borders of Israel and a future Palestinian state should be based on pre-1967 lines "with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states."

"The full and phased withdrawal" of Israeli security forces from the West Bank has to be accompanied by evidence of a Palestinian state that can help secure peace and prevent attacks against Israel, Obama said.

But, he added, a continued Israeli presence in the West Bank is inconsistent with long-term dreams of a secure Jewish and democratic state. "The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state," he said.

Ongoing Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with Palestinian steps toward a unilateral declaration of statehood, have driven the two sides further apart since Obama took office. Former Sen. George Mitchell resigned last month as the Obama administration's Mideast envoy.

Additional doubts about the viability of the stalled peace process were raised last month after a formal reconciliation agreement between the two largest Palestinian factions: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' party, the West Bank-based Fatah, and the Islamist group Hamas, which rules Gaza.

Both Israel and the United States consider Hamas a terrorist organization and have voiced strong opposition to the inclusion of the group in any unity government, demanding that it first renounce violence, recognize the state of Israel and abide by all previous agreements.

On Sunday, the district committee for planning and building at the Israeli Interior Ministry approved the construction of an additional room to 2,000 already-existing housing units in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo.

"Only in Israel (is) the extension of one room in a house ... considered news," Interior Ministry spokesman Efrat Orbach told CNN. "These are all existing apartments and now each family is entitled to add another room, should it wish to."

A plan to build 1,600 new houses in Ramat Shlomo, announced during U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's visit to the area in March of last year, caused a rift between Israel and the United States.

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Karzai: U.S. in peace talks with Taliban

Afghan president Hamid Karzai says the U.S. is engaged in peace talks with the Taliban.Afghan President Hamid Karzai tells a youth group about the talksU.S. officials could not immediately be reached for commentU.S. Defense Secretary Gates has said reconciliation talks are possible

(CNN) -- The United States is involved in peace talks with the Taliban, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a youth group in Kabul on Saturday. The speech was broadcast by Afghan state TV.

U.S. officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

At a news conference with Karzai earlier this month, outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates talked about making changes in Afghanistan.

"I believe that if we can hold on to the territory that has been recaptured from the Taliban between ourselves and the Afghan forces and perhaps expand that security, that we will be in a position toward the end of this year to perhaps have a successful opening with respect to reconciliation, or at least be in a position where we can say we've turned a corner here in Afghanistan," Gates said, referring to political reconciliation talks.

Gates made the statement during his last visit to Afghanistan as defense secretary. Karzai awarded Gates the Wazir Akbar Khan medal, the highest governmental award.

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Mexican poet's peace caravan arrives in Juarez (AP)

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – A well-known Mexican poet who has turned his grief over a murdered son into a crusade for peace ended his weeklong "consolation caravan" Friday in the country's most violent city, saying he seeks to change public consciousness and the government's current strategy for fighting drug trafficking.

Javier Sicilia, who started the caravan from outside Mexico City last Saturday, had amassed about 1,500 followers, including others who had lost innocent family members and friends to drug violence, by the time he reached Ciudad Juarez, the border city across from El Paso, Texas.

Sicilia visited a park created in the memory of 15 teens slaughtered in 2010 by gang members in what was believed to be a case of mistaken identity, as well as a field where the bodies of eight women were found in 2001. Hundreds of women were murdered in Juarez in the 1990s, the symbol of the city's violence before a fight among drug cartels heated up, killing at least 3,100 people last year alone.

"Do your jobs, stop humiliating the citizens of Juarez, and do justice to so many who have died," Sicilian called out to state and local officials. "This is the beginning of a civil resistance movement to transform consciousness, to start a dialogue in the absence of government policies."

The number of homicides has fallen for three straight months in Juarez, though government officials haven't given a reason for the drop. But the city is emblematic of Mexico's problem with drug crimes and impunity. At least 95 percent of crimes there are never prosecuted, according to local human rights groups.

Several people have been arrested in the March 28 slaying of Sicilia's son, Juan Francisco Sicilia, a college student who authorities say was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Prosecutors say drug gang members killed him and six others 10 days after a couple of Sicilia's friends had a chance scuffle with the gangsters.

The caravan of about a dozen buses started in Cuernavaca, a central resort and industrial city where Sicilia's son and the others were slain.

Since then, Sicilia has led several marches, first in Cuernavaca and then from Cuernavaca to Mexico City. He also has proposed writing the names of the dead on plaques at the spots where they were killed throughout the country so that they won't just be numbers.

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Poet leads hundreds in cross-country peace caravan (AP)

MEXICO CITY – Mexican poet-turned-activist Javier Sicilia has set off on a cross-country caravan with hundreds of fellow demonstrators to demand an end to drug-related bloodshed.

The caravan of about a dozen buses has set out from Cuernavaca, a resort and industrial city south of Mexico City where Siclia's son and six others were killed on March 28. The group is scheduled to arrive June 10 in violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso.

Organizers say they plan protest events in at least eight Mexican states along the way.

More than 35,000 people have died in drug-related violence since December 2006.

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Former enemies live in peace in UN detention block (AP)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Once they were enemies, commanding armies locked in deadly struggles. But together behind bars as war crimes suspects, ethnic hatreds largely evaporate among the men whom Ratko Mladic has joined at a high security U.N. jail to await his trial on genocide charges.

There's table tennis and group classes in English or computing at the detention unit built within the high stone walls of a jail on the outskirts of The Hague, according to a former detainee and a one-time employee.

Mladic was kept in isolation Wednesday while authorities monitor how he adjusts to life in the unit, said John Hocking, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal's top administrative official.

The former general charged with orchestrating Serb atrocities in Bosnia's 1992-95 war underwent medical checks after being flown to the Netherlands on Tuesday night, Hocking said, and there will be more tests in coming days.

Mladic's family says he had two strokes during his 16 years on the run from international justice. His Belgrade lawyer tried to block the extradition by saying Mladic was too ill to go on trial.

Mladic will make his first public appearance since being arrested when he goes to court early Friday to confirm his identity. A judge will ask him if he understands the 11 charges against him and if he wants to enter pleas.

Like his old ally and political boss Radovan Karadzic three years ago, Mladic may decline to enter pleas at his first appearance, instead opting to delay a formal response by up to a month.

Because their cases are so closely interwoven — they were indicted together in 1995 as the military and political architects of the Bosnian war's worst atrocities — it is unlikely they will be housed in the same wing of the detention unit.

While detainees whose cases are linked are often kept apart, there is no segregation along ethnic or religious lines at the detention unit.

"The most amazing thing was that those differences were not an issue at all," said the former detention unit employee, who agreed to talk to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of speaking about the closed unit. "Inside the unit, you saw no trace of the battles they fought outside that landed them there."

Ante Gotovina, a Croat general appealing his 24-year sentence for ethnic cleansing, reportedly passes his time painting portraits and scenes of fishing villages. Others take pottery and other crafts lessons.

The more energetic can play soccer and volleyball in a gym or even pump iron in a weight room — although many of the detainees are, like the 69-year-old Mladic, elderly and prefer more sedentary pursuits such as chess and cooking.

"We invited each other," Bosnian Muslim Naser Oric told Bosnian television in a 2006 interview after being released from the detention unit, where he spent three years.

Oric was freed after being given a two-year sentence for failing to prevent the murder and torture of Serb captives. His convictions were later overturned on appeal.

"We Muslims from Bosnia and Kosovo celebrated our religious holidays together with the Serbs and Croats," he said. "Croats also invited Serbs, Bosniaks and Albanians to celebrate Catholic holidays, and the Serbs again invited everybody for Serb Christmas."

For those, like Mladic, who are in ill health, the unit has its own medical center and doctor as well as access to a hospital in the jail and nearby civilian hospitals.

Nonetheless, several inmates have died during their trials or waiting for them to start. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his cell on March 11, 2006, after a heart attack.

A panel of Swedish experts reviewed the functioning of the unit after Milosevic's death and the suicide a week earlier of another key figure in the Balkan wars, the Bosnian Serb regional leader Milan Babic. It concluded that life there was far more relaxed than in normal prisons and that inmates had few complaints about their treatment.

Because many are awaiting trial or are on trial, they are presumed innocent and treated that way. They are only locked in their 15-square-meter (45-square-foot) cells at night and can roam their wings during the day.

All the one-man cells have cable TV programming from the Balkans. The accused can subscribe to newspapers from home and get regular visits from family, lawyers and consular officials.

The tribunal says the medical regime is so good that many get healthier while in custody.

Oric said the rules are fairly strict and newcomers such as Mladic are given a list of regulations when they arrive, including how to interact with other prisoners.

"In the beginning, you only follow those rules," he said. "Later, you live them, because whether you want it or not, you have to communicate with the others. They are there, you can't ignore them."

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Afghan civil unrest threatening peace effort (AP)

KABUL, Afghanistan – As thousands paid their respects this week to a slain northern Afghanistan police commander, a top lawmaker sounded an ominous warning: He and three other minority faction leaders are on a Taliban hit list and could be next.

Conflict between the Taliban — who come mostly from the country's biggest group, the Pashtuns — and members of its ethnic minorities is nothing new in a nation whose history is scarred by bloody civil strife. But rising ethnic tension is jeopardizing efforts to make peace with the Taliban after nearly 10 years of war.

Minorities already worry that President Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, will make too many concessions to their Taliban enemies to shore up his Pashtun base and craft a peace deal to end the war. Whatever support for peace talks that Karzai has won from minority groups is likely to erode if militants continue to pick off their leaders one-by-one.

Gen. Daud Daud, an ethnic Tajik, was the fifth minority leader slain by militants in recent months. He was killed Saturday in one of a series of high-profile bombings insurgents have been carrying out across the nation. His death comes just weeks before the U.S. is to start withdrawing some troops.

The July U.S. drawdown — the symbolic start of a gradual withdrawal of international forces over the next several years_ already had spawned fears the country will descend into civil war when foreign troops leave.

"There are some hands who are trying to split people from each other," Karzai said at a news conference Tuesday. "There are hands who are trying to separate our homeland and create a confusing situation where you cannot tell the difference between enemy or friend."

"We, as the Afghan nation, must be very smart and clever as we go forward, but we must keep our unity."

Afghan Interior Minister Bismullah Khan Mohammadi, who has been working to mend ethnic divisions in the nation's security force, has stressed the need for a strong force that represents all faces of Afghanistan. A unified force is needed to shoulder security at the end of 2014 when international combat forces are scheduled to be gone or in supportive roles, he says.

Currently, 44 percent of Afghan policemen and soldiers are Pashtuns, 43 percent are Tajiks, Hazaras or Uzbeks, and 13 percent are from other ethnic factions, according to the U.S.-led coalition's training mission.

Mohammadi, a member of the minority Tajik group, issued his own warning to militants at Daud's funeral on Sunday.

"We will take the revenge of our martyrs," he said. "You will not be able to reach your goals by killing our heroes."

Halaluddin Halal, former deputy interior minister, said in an interview that the Taliban targeted Daud because he had strong relations with local Afghan commanders throughout the north and was keenly aware of the insurgents' tactics. "He will be very difficult to replace," Halal said.

Karzai needs minority groups — loosely known as the Northern Alliance — to back his efforts to reconcile with the Taliban. That's because, while Pashtuns make up 42 percent of the population, collectively the minority Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and other smaller groups outnumber them. Without minority support, the country risks a de facto partition into a Pashtun south and a "minority" north.

Northern Alliance leaders say they want peace, but they are afraid of any deal that would give too much power to the very Taliban insurgents they fought in the 1990s. Some ethnic factions have started taking weapons out of mothballs in preparation for a fight if Karzai signs a peace deal that allows the Taliban to wield excessive power.

The death of Daud, who oversaw police activities in nine northern provinces, was just the latest to dent the ranks of the Northern Alliance leadership. Daud had also served as governor of Takhar province, deputy interior minister for counternarcotics and was a former bodyguard of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the charismatic Northern Alliance commander who was killed in an al-Qaida suicide bombing two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. News of his death stunned Fazel Karim Aymaq, a member of Karzai's peace council set up to facilitate talks with the Taliban.

"Daud was my friend. He was a very proud, brave person. Nobody can replace him," Aymaq said in his living room, where a photograph showed him standing with Massoud, the slain Northern Alliance commander.

Aymaq condemned militants' efforts to upset the peace process. "With the killing of these high figures, the Taliban think it will be a more open atmosphere for them to enter into talks," he said.

Four other leaders affiliated with the Northern Alliance also have been slain.

The Takhar provincial police chief, Gen. Shah Jahan Noori, died in the same blast as Daud. Mohammad Omar, the governor of neighboring Kunduz province in the north, was assassinated last fall in a bombing inside a mosque. Gen. Abdul Rahman Sayedkhili, the provincial police chief of Kunduz province, was killed by an insurgent bomber in March. A month later, a suicide bomber killed Gen. Khan Mohammad Mujahid, who was police chief in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar province in the south, but was aligned with the alliance.

Worried about Daud's death, Karzai cut short a foreign trip and rushed back to Kabul. He condemned the deadly attack and blamed it on outsiders, a veiled reference to Pakistan. The Karzai administration has repeatedly accused its neighbor of sheltering and assisting militant groups that stage attacks across the border into Afghanistan.

"Nobody in Afghanistan would carry out such an attack," Karzai's spokesman Waheed Omar said. "Evidence shows that these operations are being planned outside of Afghanistan."

Lawmaker Yunus Qanooni, a Tajik and former speaker of the lower house of parliament, said at Daud's memorial service Monday that insurgents now are threatening to kill him and three other prominent members of ethnic minorities. He did not say how he knew about the Taliban hit list.

He identified the others as First Vice President Marshal Mohammed Qasim Fahim, an ethnic Tajik; Atta Mohammed Noor, a Tajik and powerful governor of Balkh province in the north, and Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's former foreign minister, who has both Tajik and Pashtun roots.

In a statement eulogizing Daud, Abdullah said his friend of more than 26 years did not always have the cooperation of the Karzai government and was "subject to unjustifiable pressure" even as he worked to shore up security in the north, which has declined in the past two years.

Amrullah Saleh, a Tajik who was Afghanistan's top intelligence official, and Karzai both accuse Pakistan of sponsoring efforts to foster ethnic division in Afghanistan. But Saleh also criticizes the president for not articulating what kind of deal he foresees with the Taliban.

"I'm not saying that there shouldn't be talks," Saleh said at a political gathering last weekend in Kabul.

But he added: "What is the end state? ... The end state should be a pluralistic Afghanistan."

He said the Taliban should be disarmed, demobilized and reintegrated into society. And they must abide by the Afghan constitution.

"If they come to dominate us through the barrel of the gun, we will resist," he said.

___

Associated Press Writers Amir Shah and Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.

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Medvedev's Improbable Mission: Mediating Peace with Gaddafi (Time.com)

On Thursday, as NATO war planes prepared fresh strikes against the compound of Muammar Gaddafi, his prime minister, Baghdadi al-Mahmudi, put in an urgent call to Moscow. After months of civil war, he said, Gaddafi was ready to negotiate a ceasefire and he needed Russia to mediate the talks. That same day in the French resort town of Deauville, the French and U.S. presidents, who have been leading the bombing raids against Gaddafi, reportedly came to their Russian counterpart with a similar plea: Help us convince Gaddafi to leave so that a ceasefire can move forward. All the attention had to be flattering, and perhaps a little confusing, for Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. How is it that he has suddenly been pushed into the driver's seat in resolving the Libyan crisis? And more importantly, can he handle the job?

The answer, at best, is maybe. But of all the major powers in the world, Russia is the only one that has carved out a neutral position on Libya, while also taking care to stay involved. In March, it abstained from voting on the United Nations Security Council resolution that allowed the bombing of Libya; and over the past two weeks, Russia has played host to delegations from both the pro- and anti-Gaddafi forces. Neither of those talks in Moscow made much headway, but they did allow Russia to open up a dialogue with both sides - a feat that no one in the West can claim. (See photos of the battle for Libya.)

On May 26, when the leaders of the Group of Eight gathered in France for their annual summit, President Barack Obama reportedly brought up Russia's balancing act during his one-on-one with Medvedev. "After an admission that the conflict is dragging on and the West has severed all contacts with Gaddafi and his circle, it was proposed that Russia step in as a mediator in talks with the Libyan leader," a Russian diplomatic source who attended the meeting told the leading Russian daily Kommersant. The proposed mission, according to the diplomat, would be convincing Gaddafi that the only way he will survive the conflict is by giving up power and leaving Libya for any country he deems safe.

Russia's initial response seems to have been incredulity. "We noted that the solution to the Libya problem that [the Americans] were suggesting does not seem realistic," said the diplomatic source. "We asked them, Do you really believe Gaddafi can be convinced to give everything up?" It was a fair point. The besieged Colonel's rants against the West have evidenced no desire to capitulate.

But the phone call that Libyan Prime Minister Mahmudi made to Moscow on Thursday showed a new readiness, even a desperation, to negotiate. For the first time since the war began, Mahmudi said, in his conversation with the Russian foreign minister, that Gaddafi's regime was ready for unconditional talks with the rebels. After taking a day to think about the offer to mediate the talks, Russia also seemed to change its tone. On Friday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov became the first Russian official to agree with the West that Gaddafi must give up power, and confirmed that Moscow is ready to broker a deal. "Colonel Gaddafi has deprived himself of legitimacy with his actions," Ryabkov told reporters in Deauville. "We should help him leave." (See "Medvedev's Challenge to Putin: Oh, Never Mind.")

So far, however, Gaddafi's representatives have only offered to take part in a transition of power in Libya that would include constitutional reforms. That has not suited the rebels and their backers in the West, who insist that Gaddafi relinquish power and go into exile unconditionally. So negotiating a deal between them will not be easy, and may require more statecraft than President Medvedev can muster.

In March, his stance on Libya was already undermined by his senior partner, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who second-guessed Medvedev's decision not to veto the U.N. resolution against Gaddafi. Putin called the document "defective and flawed," and Western leaders were left to wonder where Russia really stood on the Libya question.

So Medvedev's sudden eagerness to mediate the conflict looks like a hasty attempt to claw back some foreign policy clout, says Matthew Rojansky, deputy head of the Russia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "But it's very difficult to picture Russia steering this ship safely to harbor," Rojansky says. "Gaddafi doesn't have a lot of incentives at this point, and Russia doesn't have a lot of leverage to convince him." (See "Gaddafi's Last Stand.")

It's unclear, for instance, how Russia can guarantee that Gaddafi will not end up at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, whose top prosecutor said this month that he wants the Colonel arrested for crimes against humanity. On this front, the precedent set in 1999 is not likely to help. That was when the Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin, a gifted negotiator, convinced Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosovic to step down in the face of a NATO bombing campaign. When those talks succeeded, Milosevic was put on trial for war crimes in the Hague, where he died in a prison cell in 2006.

On Friday, Medvedev did little to soothe such concerns at the G8's final press conference, where some of his remarks seemed confused. "When it comes to the departure of the current leader of the Libyan revolution, by which I mean, of course, Gaddafi, then in my opinion, I don't think it makes much difference," Medvedev said. To start the peace negotiations, he said he is dispatching Senator Mikhail Margelov, who has been the President's special envoy in Africa for all of nine weeks but, to his credit, speaks Arabic. The envoy's main objective, Medvedev added, would be to hold talks with the rebels in Benghazi and, "if there is a chance," he may visit Tripoli, too.

For its part, the White House said on Friday that it would stay in close touch with Russia as it pursues its conversations the Libyans. They'd better also wish the Russians luck. The U.S. exit strategy out of a potentially protracted war in Libya now seems to wind through Moscow.

See pictures of the rule of Colonel Gaddafi.

See TIME's special report: "The Middle East in Revolt."

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