Mahmoud Jibril Live Blog

Reuters - Libya's departing prime minister said on Sunday consultations were under way to form an interim government within a month, replacing the country's National Transitional Council.

"There are consultations which started to form an ... interim government. This process will take, I think, from one week to one month approximately. This is my expectation. It might go longer, it might be less than that," Mahmoud Jibril told reporters in English.

Elections to the country's new national congress that would replace the governing National Transitional Council would follow as soon as possible afterwards, he said.  He said he did not plan to stand for any official position in Libya.

Mahmoud Jibril, Libya's interim premier, told reporters that Seif al-Islam, son of Libya's ousted leader Gaddafi who was killed in the NTC's capture of his hometown Sirte on Thursday, was believed to be pinned down in a village near the Mediterranean city.

"There is fighting going on in Wadi al-Ather," he said. "The revolutionaries have attacked an armed convoy. We suspect that Seif might be in the convoy," he said, referring to the last remaining top figure in Gaddafi's regime.

- AFP

Mahmoud Shamam, NTC information minister, spoke to Al Jazeera's James Bays, saying

There is not going to be any political vacuum [in Libya]. The poltical executive will be in power until the new government is formed.

Bays, reporting from Tripoli, said:

Mahmoud Jibril has made it quite clear that once the war phase is over, he will stand down and there will be a new interim government. Elections will take place some months from now, probably in early summer. The areas of political and military manouvering will be a bit more difficult however.

Mahmoud Jibril, the National Transitional Council's deputy head, has said that ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi is believed to be recruiting fighters from other African countries and preparing for a possible counter-revolution, hoping to destabilise Libya's new government.

Wednesday's comments by Mahmoud Jibril reflected fears that Gaddafi will be able to use friendly relations with neighboring countries cultivated during his more than four decades in power to help him launch a bid to return to power.

“Reports have shown that 68 vehicles with at least eight fighters each crossed the Libyan borders to Mali and Gaddafi is hiding in the southern desert,'' Jibril told reporters.

He said Gaddafi had made a deal with the Hamada tribe, which roams the borders between Chad, Sudan and Libya, to provide 12,000 fighters “to enter Libya and start the fight”.