Leaders of the National Transitional Council, which has Western support, pressed foreign governments to release Libyan funds frozen abroad, warning of its urgent need to impose order and provide services to a population traumatised by six months of conflict and 42 years of eccentric, personal rule. But Qadhafi's long-time allies in Africa, beneficiaries of his oil-fuelled largesse and sympathisers with a foreign policy he called anti-colonial, offered the fugitive strongman a grain of comfort and irked the rebels by refusing to follow Arab and Western powers in recognising the NTC as the legal government.
Combined with the reluctance of major powers like China, Russia and Brazil, to see Europeans and Americans dominate a nation with Africa's biggest oil reserves, the African Union's resistance may slow the pace at which funds are released. Mahmoud Jibril, head of the government in waiting, said time was short. Visiting Nato member Turkey, he said: "We have to establish an army, strong police force to be able meet the needs of the people and we need capital and we need the assets. "All our friends in the international community speak of stability and security. We need that too."
While many African states have recognised the NTC, the AU would not do so as long as fighting continued, South African President Jacob Zuma, a vocal advocate for Qadhafi, said after a meeting in Addis Ababa at which the AU called for all sides in the conflict to negotiate a peace and work for democracy.
"If there is fighting, there is fighting," Zuma said. "The process is fluid. That's part of what we inform countries - whether there is an authority to recognise." Rebel leaders are determined to show they are in charge, though estimates vary of when the TNC will move formally from its Benghazi base in the east to the war zone that is Tripoli. "We have come to operate the country. We are now the legal authority," declared Mohammed al-Alagi, a lawyer who has been the TNC's justice minister for some months, as he met foreign journalists in the capital wearing a rebel flag as a bandana.
QADHAFI "UNDER SIEGE" Other TNC leaders, who stress they want to work with other rebel groups which sprang up later in the west as well with those who have previously supported Qadhafi, say the war will only be over once the fallen leader is caught, "dead or alive".
Alagi voiced confidence that Qadhafi and his entourage of sons and aides was surrounded and would soon be captured: "The area where he is now is under siege," he told Reuters, while declining to say where in Tripoli he thought Qadhafi was. "The rebels are monitoring the area and they are dealing with it."
Similar confidence has proved misplaced since the irregular armies overran Qadhafi's compound on Tuesday, however, and analysts do not rule out that the 69-year-old, a veteran master of surprise, might have slipped away to rally supporters for an insurgency. He has not been seen in public for two months, but made a defiant audio broadcast on Thursday.
Colonel Hisham Buhagiar of the rebel force in the capital said Libyan commandos were targeting several areas: "We are sending special forces every day to hunt down Qadhafi. We have one unit that does intelligence and other units that hunt him." Nato forces, notably from France and Britain, are helping the rebels. Many analysts assume they are giving intelligence and may have their own special forces troops on the ground. Despite sporadic gunfire as rebel fighters tried to take pockets of loyalist resistance, Tripoli was quieter than in recent days. Dead bodies, the stench of rotting garbage in the oppressive summer heat, wrecked cars and the other detritus of war were evidence of frantic battles and wildly erratic firing.
Some of Tripoli's two million people, suffering from power cuts, dwindling supplies and a critical shortage of medical supplies and healthcare, ventured out to local mosques, some praying QadHafi can be found by Monday, when Muslims mark the end of the fasting month of Ramadan with the festival of Eid. "Gaddafi is the biggest criminal and dictator and we hope we will find him before the end of Ramadan," said Milad Abu Aisha, a 60-year-old pensioner who joined friends at his local mosque for traditional worship on the last Friday of Ramadan.