BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — Libyan opposition supporters protested Monday against a delegation of African leaders who arrived in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi to try to broker a cease-fire with Moammar Gadhafi's regime, saying there can be no peace until the longtime leader gives up power.
More than 1,000 demonstrators waved the pre-Gadhafi flags that have come to symbolize the rebel movement and chanted slogans against Gadhafi outside a Benghazi hotel.
They said they had little faith in the visiting African Union mediators, most of them allies of Gadhafi who are preaching democracy for Libya but don’t practice it at home.
The African negotiators met with Gadhafi late Sunday in the capital, Tripoli, and said he accepted their proposal for a cease-fire with the rebels that would also include a halt to the three-week-old international campaign of airstrikes.
However, an Algerian representative of the delegation was vague on whether the proposal includes a demand for Gadhafi to give up power and would only say that the option was discussed.
The protesters in Benghazi and the opposition leadership based in the city are demanding that Gadhafi step down immediately.
"On the issue of Gadhafi and his sons, there is no negotiation," said Ahmed al-Adbor, a member of the opposition’s transitional ruling council.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini supported that position.
"The sons and the family of Gadhafi cannot participate in the political future of Libya," he said Monday on France’s Europe-1 radio. He said Gadhafi’s departure would have to happen "in parallel" with any cease-fire.
Gadhafi hasn’t abided by a cease-fire he immediately declared after international airstrikes were authorized last month.
He has also rejected demands from the rebels, the United States and its European allies that he relinquish power immediately.
After the talks with Gadhafi late Sunday, the AU delegation said he accepted their "road map" for a cease-fire.
The secretary general of NATO, which took over control of the air operation from the U.S., said Monday that any cease-fire must be credible and verifiable.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen also said that military action alone won’t solve the crisis in Libya.
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman Steve Field told reporters Monday that NATO’s action would not be halted without proof of a genuine cease-fire.
"Whether or not there is a cease-fire, that is in Gadhafi’s hands. We have to judge him by what he does, not what he says," Field said.
NATO airstrikes on Sunday battered Gadhafi’s tanks, helping the rebels push back government troops who had been advancing toward Benghazi on an east-west highway along the country’s northern Mediterranean coast.
Rebels reported Sunday that the airstrikes largely stopped heavy shelling by government forces of the eastern city of Ajdabiya — a critical gateway to Benghazi, the opposition’s de facto capital and Libya’s second largest city.
With some breathing room around Ajdabiya, the rebels could mount another attempt to retake and hold the oil ports of Ras Lanouf and Brega farther west, which have changed hands repeatedly throughout the fighting.
That would bring them a step closer to the key city of Sirte, a Gadhafi stronghold and home to the Libyan leader’s tribe. Several rebel advances toward the city have been driven back.
NATO is operating under a U.N. resolution authorizing a no-fly zone and airstrikes to protect Libyan civilians.
The AU’s draft calls for an immediate cease-fire, cooperation in opening channels for humanitarian aid, protection of foreign nationals and the start of a dialogue between rebels and the government.
AU officials, however, made no mention of any requirement for Gadhafi to pull his troops out of cities as rebels have demanded.
"We have completed our mission with the brother leader, and the brother leader’s delegation has accepted the road map as presented by us," South African President Jacob Zuma said Sunday, referring to Gadhafi by his preferred title.
He traveled to Tripoli with the heads of Mali and Mauritania to meet with Gadhafi, whose more than 40-year rule has been threatened by the uprising that began nearly two months ago.
Zuma called on NATO to end airstrikes to "give the cease-fire a chance."
Gadhafi enjoys substantial support from countries of the AU, an organization that he chaired two years ago and helped transform using Libya’s oil wealth.
Though the AU has condemned attacks on civilians, last week its current leader, Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, decried foreign intervention in Libya’s nearly two-month-old uprising, which he declared to be an internal problem.
Concern about civilian casualties is centered on the city of Misrata, the only major city in the west of Libya under partial rebel control.
Residents of the city say Gadhafi’s forces have shelled the city from its outskirts and lined a main street with snipers.
In Geneva, the U.N. children’s agency said Monday that at least 20 children have been killed and many more have been injured in the city over the past three weeks. Children as young as 9 months were among the victims and the majority were under 10 years of age, UNICEF said.
They died of shrapnel from mortar shells and tank fire, and bullet wounds, it said.
Last week, the agency said children there were among those being targeted by snipers.
