CAIRO ON THE BRINK

CAIRO — A five-day-old uprising in Libya spread for the first time to the capital of Tripoli late on Sunday as the heir-apparent son of its strongman leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, warned Libyans in a televised speech that their oil-rich country would fall into an apocalyptic civil war and even renewed Western “colonization” if they threw off his father’s 40-year-long rule.


In a rambling, disjointed address delivered at about 1 a.m. on Monday, the son, Saif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, played down the uprising sweeping the country, which witnesses and rights activists say has left nearly 200 people dead and hundreds wounded from gunfire by security forces. He repeated several times that “Libya is not Tunisia or Egypt” — the neighbors to the east and west that both overthrew their veteran dictators in the space of the last six weeks. NYTIMES