Oil-rich eastern Libya pulls away from central government, declares semiautonomous state The conference declared that the eastern state, known as Barqa, would have its own parliament, police force, courts and capital - Benghazi, the country's second largest city - to run its own affairs. Foreign policy, the national army and oil resources would be left to the central government in the capital Tripoli in western Libya. Barqa would cover nearly half the country, from the center to the Egyptian border in the east and down to the borders with Chad and Sudan in the south. Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, head of the Tripoli-based interim central government known as the National Transitional Council, warned the declaration "leads to danger" of eventually breaking up the North African nation of 6 million. But he also said it was to be expected because the east played a pivotal role in ending Gadhafi's rule. "Some Arab nations, unfortunately, have supported and encouraged this to happen," he said, without naming any specific countries. "These nations are funding this kind of unacceptable strife," he added at a news conference in Tripoli. What happened today is the beginning of a conspiracy against Libya and Libyans.  Abdul-Jalil also appealed to Libyans for patience and resolve in the face of the country's mounting problems. Fadl-Allah Haroun, a senior tribal figure and militia commander, said the declaration aims for administrative independence not separation. We are not talking about changing the flag or national anthem. We are talking about different administration, a parliament and managing the financial affairs," he said. The east was the cradle of last year's uprising and civil war that ousted Gadhafi. In the early days of the revolt, the entire east came under opposition control and remained that way until Gadhafi fell in August. The eastern rebels set up the National Transitional Council, originally in Benghazi, which then moved to Tripoli and became the central government. The goal for the east now is to revive the system in place from 1951 until 1963, when Libya, ruled by a monarchy, was divided into three states: Tripolitania in the west, Fezzan in the southwest and Cyrenaica in the east - or Barqa, as it was called in Arabic. Easterners say the step is necessary to end the marginalization their region suffered for decades under Gadhafi's rule. The former dictator focused development and largesse on the west, allowing infrastructure to decline in the east, an area that was a constant source of opposition to the regime.