“I will never leave my country,” says Qadhafi

Updated at: 1017 PST,  Sunday, July 17, 2011  TRIPOLI: Libyan leader Moamer Qadhafi said yesterday he would never leave the land of his ancestors after fresh international calls for him to go and as rebels pressed their campaign to overthrow him "They are asking me to leave. That's a laugh. I will never leave the land of my ancestors or the people who have sacrificed themselves for me," he said in a loudspeaker address to supporters in Zawiyah, some 50 kilometres west of Tripoli. Qadhafi blamed the rebels taking hostage of the people in Misarata, Bin Ghazi and western hilly areas and they were being used as the human shields, who soon be freed. Western and regional powers met in Istanbul on Friday for the fourth gathering of the Libya contact group, which saw a new call on Qadhafi to go after more than four decades in power. The Libyan leader has for five months been faced with an armed rebellion unprecedented since he came to power in 1969.