BENGHAZI, Libya — US President Barack Obama hailed a "new chapter" for Libya Tuesday as the victorious rebels' red, black and green flag was hoisted at the United Nations ahead of its annual General Assembly.
Fugitive strongman Moamer Kadhafi issued an audio message dismissing the new government as a "charade" that would not outlive the NATO air and naval support that brought it to power.
But Obama warned Kadhafi loyalists still putting up resistance in their remaining bastions to lay down their arms and join the new Libya, promising that NATO-led air strikes would continue as long as they remained a threat.
"Today, the Libyan people are writing a new chapter in the life of their nation," the US president told world leaders at a UN meeting on Libya being held on the sidelines of the General Assembly.
"After four decades of darkness, they can walk the streets, free from a tyrant," he told the meeting which was also attended by Libya's new leadership.
Credit for the "liberation of Libya, belongs to the people of Libya," he insisted, but stressed the international community was not pulling out yet.
"So long as the Libyan people are being threatened, the NATO-led mission to protect them will continue. And those still holding out must understand the old regime is over, and it is time to lay down your arms and join the new Libya," the US commander-in-chief said.
Obama met Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) chief, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, for the first time Tuesday and the US leader said the focus should also now turn to a democratic transition after 42 years of dictatorship.
"We all know what's needed. A transition that is timely. New laws and a constitution that uphold the rule of law. Political parties and a strong civil society. And, for the first time in Libyan history, free and fair elections."
Abdel Jalil praised the NATO-led coalition for its assistance in the uprising in which he said some 25,000 people had died, and he promised fair trials for captured members of the ousted regime.
The flag of the new Libya was flying over the United Nations in New York ahead of the General Assembly, an event at which Kadhafi was for decades an outlandish fixture turning up with his trademark tent to deliver rambling speeches to other world leaders.
The red, black and green of the new Libya also took its place among the flags of UN member states at the world body's European headquarters in Geneva in a ceremony on Tuesday, replacing the green flag of the Kadhafi era.
"It is a really emotional moment to see the flag," said ambassador Ibrahim Aldredi, who with other members of the Libyan delegation in Geneva defected to the rebels in February, barely a month after the uprising began.
In his first message in nearly two weeks, Kadhafi told his remaining loyalists that the new regime was only temporary.
"What is happening in Libya is a charade which can only take place thanks to the (NATO-led) air raids, which will not last forever," he said in the message aired by Syria-based Arrai television.
"Do not rejoice and don't believe that one regime has been overthrown and another imposed with the help of air and maritime strikes," Kadhafi added.
The recording was the first by Kadhafi since September 8, when he denied reports that he had joined other members of his family and regime in fleeing to neighbouring Algeria or Niger.
It was released after the new regime's forces said they captured the airport and a garrison in his southern redoubt of Sabha, and fighting raged in two of his northern strongholds.
The capture of the airport and garrison at Sabha, a strategic desert city 800 kilometres (500 miles) south of Tripoli, was announced early Tuesday by Mohammed Wardugu, spokesman for the NTC's "Desert Shield Brigade."
NTC forces were set to take total control of the entire region "imminently," said Wardugu, brother of brigade commander Barka Wardugu.
"The problem is southwestern Libya, most notably Awbari and Ghat (on the Algerian border), which are still under the control of Kadhafi forces."
He said NTC forces had also seized Kadhafi's intelligence chief in the Al-Kufra region in the deep southeast, General Belgacem Al-Abaaj, and forced more than 300 of his mercenaries to flee before detaining 150 loyalists.
NATO said it had targeted Sabha with air strikes on Monday, taking out two air missile systems, two radar defence facilities and three air missile facilities.
It also struck an armed vehicle and multiple rocket system in Kadhafi's hometown Sirte; a control node near Bani Walid, to its southwest: and six anti-aircraft guns and a control node around the Al-Jufra oasis towns of Waddan and Hun.
The NATO strikes around Sirte came as dozens of new regime fighters stormed the nearby town of Sultana, braving rocket and artillery attacks.
Shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest), the fighters drove into Sultana -- the site of steady fighting over the previous two days.
The NTC fighters pushed on to within 25 kilometres (15 miles) of Sirte on Tuesday, establishing a new frontline where intense artillery and heavy machine-gun exchanges erupted, an AFP correspondent reported.
Relays of ambulances and pickups were seen evacuating casualties from the front to the nearest hospital in Harawa to the east.
The African Union, which had long held out against according Libya's seat to the NTC, on Tuesday finally announced it was recognising the new leadership.
The bloc's chairman, Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema announced that "the African Union recognises the National Transitional Council (NTC) as the representative of the Libyan people as they form an all-inclusive transitional government that will occupy the Libyan seat at the African Union."
Kadhafi was a major player in the AU before his ouster and bankrolled many of its poorer members.
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