Libya Live Blog

Syria has told Libya and Tunisia to close their embassies in Damascus within 72 hours, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Saturday, after the two North African countries announced similar measures against Syria.

Libya said on Thursday it had given Syria's charge d'affaires and his staff in Tripoli three days to leave the country, and last week Tunisia said it had started procedures to expel the Syrian ambassador and withdraw recognition of the Syrian leadership under President Bashar al-Assad. [Reuters]

Libya's National Transitional Council will scrap a plan to set a 10 per cent quota for women in its new parliament, a Western diplomat told Reuters on Friday.

In December, the NTC proposed an electoral draft law including plans for the quota and asked for comments. Around 14,000 emails came in, 80 per cent of which opposed the quota, including some from women's rights groups, the diplomat said.

A rule barring voting for people with multiple nationalities will also go, but the NTC will relax a ban on its own members running for office. Libyans with ties to Gaddafi will still be banned, as will academics who wrote about Gaddafi's political manifesto, his "Green Book".

A new force of border guards in Libya was deployed at the key crossing with Tunisia, marking the first time an interior ministry force from the transitional government has taken responsibility since the ouster of former leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Former rebels had been in control of the Libyan side of Ras Ajdir crossing for at least two months. It is the primary crossing between Tunisia and Libya, and is on a major trade route to the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

"The revolutionaries helped secure the border crossing over the previous period, and now they have handed it over to the interior ministry which will supervise it from now on," Omar Al-Khadrawy, interior ministry secretary, said on Thursday.