MOSCOW — Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi will have to receive security guarantees to relinquish his four decades of rule over the North African nation, said Mikhail Margelov, Russia’s envoy for negotiating Gadhafi’s departure.

“Gadhafi will be interested in getting guarantees about his personal security,” Margelov said Tuesday after holding talks with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in Harare.

Rebels have seized eastern Libya, while Gadhafi clings to much of the rest of the country and is believed to be hunkering down in the capital, Tripoli, his main power base.

Gadhafi is willing to surrender power in exchange for security guarantees, Moscow-based Kommersant reported Tuesday, citing an unidentified high-level Russian official. President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday discussed an African Union plan to resolve the Libyan conflict with his South African counterpart, Jacob Zuma, and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Sochi, Russia.

NATO must end its campaign against Gadhafi’s forces to allow the political process to go forward, Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s ambassador to NATO and a participant in the talks, said Tuesday from St. Petersburg.

Countries including France have signaled they may meet Gadhafi’s conditions by unfreezing his assets and providing immunity from the United Nations war tribunal in The Hague if he cedes power peacefully, Kommersant reported.

“It’s clear that many countries will be ready to be quite flexible toward Gadhafi to convince him to give up all his political posts and his family to give up their economic influence,” Margelov said.

The Libyan leader is also demanding that his son Saif al-Islam Gadhafi take part in the elections that would follow his resignation, according to Kommersant.

Gadhafi will not be able to stay in Libya, said Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the head of the National Transitional Council of the rebels. Jalal el-Gallal, a spokesman for the council, had separately said that the rebels would tolerate the presence of Gadhafi in Libya were the leader to resign and face prosecution.

The next step under the African Union-sponsored peace plan is for high-ranking Libyan rebel and government representatives to agree on how to negotiate a final settlement, according to Margelov.