Libya's NTC Outlines 20-Month Democratic Road Map

A council tasked with drafting a constitution for Libya should be elected within eight months ahead of presidential and legislative polls in early 2013, a rebel leadership official said Friday.

"We have outlined a clear road plan, a transition period of about 20 months," Guma al-Gamaty, the National Transitional Council's representative in Britain, told BBC radio.

He said the process of transition was already under way and the NTC leadership would complete their move to Tripoli within a few days.

For the first eight months, the council will lead Libya, at the end of which time a council of about 200 people should have been directly elected, Gamaty said.

"This council... will take over and oversee the drafting of a democratic constitution, that should be debated and then brought to a referendum," he said.

Within a year of the council being put in place, parliamentary and presidential elections should take place, he said.

"So we have eight months and a year that will take us to final elections with both parliamentary and presidential elections," said Gamaty.

"And then hopefully by the end of about 20 months, the Libyan people will have elected the leaders they want to lead their country."

Gamaty added the fact that toppled leader Moammar Gadhafi was still at large in Libya was no obstacle to starting the transition.

"As long as Tripoli is stabilized and secure and safe, which is almost now, and the overwhelming majority of other cities and towns, Libyans can get on with the process of transition and stabilization and the new political process," he said.

"Gadhafi is still at large but he is hiding, he is isolated, surrounded.

"We think it's a matter of time before he is either apprehended or if he resists, he might be killed."