Desk Report: Libyan rebels said they expect to receive an offer from Muammar Gaddafi “very soon” that could end the four-month war but insisted the veteran strongman must agree to step down.

The rebels said they were not in direct contact with Gaddafi officials but said they expected to receive the offer through South African and French intermediaries.

South African President Jacob Zuma, who met Gaddafi last month without securing a deal acceptable to the rebels, was to host a meeting of the African Union’s Libya panel on Sunday to discuss the bloc’s mediation efforts.

“We expect to get an offer very soon; he (Gaddafi) is unable to breathe,” Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice chairman of the rebel National Transitional Council, told AFP in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

“We want to preserve life, so we want to end the war as soon as possible,” he added. “We have always left him some room for an exit.”

Ghoga said the NTC understood through contacts with France and South Africa that an offer was being prepared by the authorities in Tripoli.

“These are the countries chosen by the Gaddafi regime to present a proposal to the National Transitional Council, but we have not received anything to date,” he said.

“Any proposal that is brought to us, we will take a serious look at it so long as it guarantees that Gaddafi and his regime, his inner circle, do not remain in power.” South African President Jacob Zuma Sunday warned Nato against using its military campaign in Libya for the “political assassination” of Muammar Gaddafi, at the start of talks on the war.

South Africa voted for the UN resolution for a no-fly zone over Libya, which Nato uses to justify its campaign, but in some of his sharpest language yet, Zuma warned the alliance against overstepping its mandate.

“The continuing bombing by Nato and its allies is a concern that has been raised by our committee and by the AU Assembly, because the intention of Resolution 1973 was to protect the Libyan people and facilitate the humanitarian effort,” Zuma said, referring to an African Union peace mission on Libya.

“The intention was not to authorise a campaign for regime change or political assassination,” he said in opening talks in Pretoria of the AU panel on Libya, according to a text of the speech provided to AFP.

“On the ground, there is a military stalemate which cannot and must not be allowed to drag on and on—both because of its horrendous cost in civilian lives and the potential it has to destabilise the entire sub-region,” he said.