‘Blair told Gaddafi to quit, flee’

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair urged Muammar Gaddafi to stand aside and find a bolthole in the early days of the Libyan uprising, telephone transcripts released on Thursday showed.

Mr Blair urged the Libyan dictator to stop the violence, start a process of change, stand aside, resolve the situation peacefully and keep communications open between them.

Gaddafi insisted Libya was under attack from sleeper cells from the Al Qaeda terror network who wanted to take north Africa and attack Europe — and if Western forces intervened, Libya would end up “like Iraq”.

“If you have a safe place to go you should go there because this will not end peacefully,” Mr Blair warned.

The transcripts cast light on Gaddafi’s thinking as the uprising began to escalate.

They were published by the British Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, which is examining the Western intervention in Libya’s civil war and Britain’s options now concerning the troubled country.

Committee chair Crispin Blunt said they would consider “whether Gaddafi’s prophetic warning of the rise of extremist militant groups... was wrongly ignored”.