It has emerged via Russia’s special representative to Libya that members of Muammar Gaddafi’s government are in contact across Europe with members of the Libyan rebel army. Earlier this week the head of the World Chess Federation, a man with direct Kremlin links, took Gaddafi on in a ‘diplomatic’ chess game. Maybe his persuasion has helped.

Numerous forces around the world are trying desperately to break the tyrannical 41-year reign of power that Gaddafi has so desperately clung to for so long.

It now seems there might be a possible breakthrough on the day that the war heads into its fourth consecutive month of fighting.

Citing Tripoli’s Prime Minister, Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi, Mikhail Margelov, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s special representative for Africa, said that there was direct conversation taking place.

The pair met in the Libyan capital on Thursday as part of Moscow’s efforts to help end the conflict.

This comes after Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of the World Chess Federation and a man with close ties to the Kremlin, took Gaddafi on in a ‘diplomatic’ game of chess on Sunday.

Coincidentally, Ilyumzhinov reportedly went with a message that Gaddafi should move his white pawn from E2 to E4, thereby exposing his king to attack. A kind of metaphorical warning that the end was near if Gaddafi didn’t start cooperating.

Margelov explained to reporters from Tunis on Friday that Al-Mahmoudi had told him that representatives from his government were in contact with officials from Benghazi in several European capitals, including France, Germany and Norway.

Margelov told the contingent of journalists:

The prime minister wanted to tell me that they have a sort of communication channel with the Transitional National Council.

Yesterday he spoke to Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency:

I was assured at today’s negotiations that direct contacts between Benghazi and Tripoli are already underway.

The Libyan prime minister told me that a round of such contacts concluded yesterday in Paris.

French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said he could not confirm that talks had taken place.

Hopefully a resolution will soon be reached so that Libya can get on with building a new future.

South Africa still awaits news on the whereabouts of the remains of Anton Hammerl.

[Source: Reuters]