Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi sent emissaries to Caracas over the weekend to ask president Hugo Chávez to help his regime sell crude oil through Venezuela in international markets, thus evading internationally imposed sanctions, western intelligence sources said.

The small delegation — headed by Planning and Finance Minister Abdulhafid Zlitni — arrived Sunday on a private jet and Chávez confirmed its presence in the South American country.

“Gaddafi has sent us an emissary,” Chávez told a government television channel. “They bring a letter for me. That is good. The world needs to know it. As soon as you have it translated,” he told his foreign affairs minister, Nicolás Maduro, who was at the television studio, “bring it to me.”

The intelligence sources told El Nuevo Herald that the emissaries plan to request that Venezuela take control over more than a dozen tankers, each with a capacity to store more than 160,000 tons of oil, and the possibility to market more than 1.5 million barrels of Libyan crude oil through the South American country.

“[Gaddafi] is proposing that […] Venezuela assume ownership of the ships to continue operating them through Venezuela,” said one of the sources, who spoke under the condition of anonymity. “If this is done, it would be a violation of all sanctions.”

The sources said that the Libyan government also has given orders to ask the Venezuelan government to supply water and fuel to two Libyan boats stranded in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as purchase nearly 5,000 tons of additives for producing gasoline.

The request also considers the possibility of selling hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil products that Libya has not been able to place in the market after the United Nations unanimously approved sanctions against Gaddafi’s regime due to its bloody repression against dissidents, the sources said.

A spokesperson for the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington told El Nuevo Herald that the diplomatic mission has no information about this.

The emissaries have instructions to offer the Venezuelan government the option of receiving payment through one of its embassies in a North African country.

The United Nations has adopted — as have the European Union and the United States — a series of sanctions against Libya in an attempt to undermine Gaddafi’s regime’s financial stability after declaring that it had committed “massive and systematic violations” of its population’s human rights.

The measures adopted include freezing the assets of the government’s oil entity and its subsidiaries, as well as of the Libyan leader’s family. Likewise, the nations imposed a ban of arms sales to the Libyan regime.

The Libyan delegation had requested a meeting with Chávez directly, but the Venezuelan president said he had declined due to his medical condition and that the meeting would be held with Maduro on Monday. Chávez nonetheless used the occasion to defend the Libyan leader.

“Gaddafi is resisting NATO’s aggression, which is now bombing media facilities,” the president said, alluding to the attack against Libya’s state television station over the weekend.

“And the world is unmoved,” said Chávez, who in 2009 praised Gaddafi’s humanitarian and social work presenting him with a replica of Simón Bolívar’s sword.

Chávez again reiterated that the attacks against Libya were about the oil and water reserves that country has in its subsoil. He then added that Venezuela, as the country with the “top reserves in the world” must take measures to defend its territory.

“That forces us to enhance our independence, and the power and capability to defend our country,” he said, alluding to OPEC’s ratification of the 296.5 billion barrels of crude oil Venezuela has certified as reserves.

Meanwhile, Maduro said that the aggression model “applied” to Libya is “on its way to failure.”

“We could say today that Muammar el-Gaddafi has come out of all of this aggression strengthened as a leader,” he said. “He has demonstrated great courage, great aplomb.”

Chávez has reiterated his support for Gaddafi since the beginning of the military intervention in Libya and has accused the United States and Europe of wanting to seize that country’s resources.

This article was complemented by El Nuevo Herald’s wire services.