Gaddafi looking to hire New York PR firm

Embattled Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi wants to hire a New York public-relations firm in a bid to improve his image, a pitch letter emailed to agencies indicates.

In the letter an official in Tripoli is said to have recently emailed to New York and London agencies, the leader wants a firm that will head daily news conferences and spread news on his "moral" and "legal" claims to power. In the email, Ali Darwash of the north African country's Ministry of Information says the NATO strikes were caused by a "PR attack," rather than the killing of innocent protesters, the Daily Mail reports. “We have good moral, political and legal logic supporting our position as the legitimate, sovereign and popular government of Libya,’’ Ali Darwash said in the letter, indicating the Libyan strong man intends to remain in power in spite of the local and seeming international pressure for him to leave. "Libya has been under an unjustified media and P.R attack which led to NATO's military involvement,’’ Darwash writes on, subtly signalling the need to galvanise international support to a halt the current NATO strikes. To make a deal that would match the urgent need for a solution that would favour the embattled Libyan leader, Darwarsh adds: "We can formalise any deal with your organization through a third party to help move things forward fast." According to an official at the Libyan Mission in New York, the email is legitimate. Ronn Torossian of public relations firm 5WPR, played down the chances of the pitch pulling through. He described the pitch as ‘very unorthodox’ and said: "I highly doubt any PR firm will positively respond to this request." AFP reports that Libya's rebels have for weeks been holding talks with former senior figures from the regime of Gaddafi in Tripoli. "There have for weeks been political negotiations between the NTC (the rebel National Transitional Council) and the people in Tripoli who have no blood on their hands," AFP quoted French writer Bernard-Henri Levy as telling Europe 1 radio. He said the rebels were talking to those who were "former Kadhafi lieutenants, technocrats, people who know how to run a state.”