In a televised speech Tuesday evening, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said that he would not resign. “I have not yet used all the power at my disposal, and if I have to, I will use more force” to end the protests that have brought the country to the brink of civil war, he said. He called on his supporters to conduct mass counter-protests showing their solidarity with his government.
He dismissed the mass protests against him as the work of “misled youth” who did not understand what was best for the country, and said that anyone protesting against him must be drunk or on drugs. He said that he would never leave Libya, no matter what. “I will not leave this land, I will die here as a martyr,” he said, adding that the United States was trying to turn Libya into “another Afghanistan. We won our country from the United States and Britain, and we will not return it to them,” he added.