Libya's wartime rebel prime minister said his country faces a lengthy and dangerous power vacuum where foreign powers may exploit rival militias on the streets and he called for a dramatic acceleration in plans for full elections. In an interview with Reuters, Mahmoud Jibril said he wanted a current timetable for drafting a constitution by mid-2013 to be scrapped in favor of a stripped down process to produce a basic law and a government with full powers in just six months. “I just want to shorten the period of this political vacuum,” he said on Tuesday evening at the heavily guarded college campus on the outskirts of Tripoli that houses the interim leadership, the National Transitional Council. “The more we prolong this period, it's very dangerous for the national unity of this country. Too many actors started to intervene in Libyan politics,” added Jibril, who stepped down from the NTC executive two weeks ago after the country was declared “liberated” following the killing of Muammar Gaddafi. “This is a political vacuum which can be filled by any power, whether a foreign power or an internal power which has weapons in its hands ... It's not healthy for the security of this country,” Jibril said.
