* Onetime aide broke with Gaddafi in 1990s
* Says new party to be secular, liberal, led by youth
By Deepa Babington
ROME, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Muammar Gaddafi's onetime right-hand man Abdel Salam Jalloud said on Thursday he plans to form a secular political party with an eye towards future elections in Libya.
Jalloud was a member of the junta that staged the 1969 coup that brought Gaddafi to power. He was seen as Gaddafi's second-in-command but fell out of favour with him several years ago.
Jalloud defected to the rebels before they overran most of the capital Tripoli on Tuesday, forcing Gaddafi into hiding.
He told journalists in Rome that it was up to Libyans to decide if he should join a future government and that he had discussed, largely with groups in southern and western Libya, plans for a new party.
"We have agreed to form a political party, but we haven't openly discussed it so far because we're still in talks with political forces in the east," Jalloud said.
"It will be a nationalist, liberal, secular party."
It will try to build a strong civil society with a free press and an independent judiciary and be led by young Libyans between the ages of 25-50, he said.
The party, which does not have a name yet, would embrace a socialist system for the economy and also focus on women.
Jalloud said he had broken with Gaddafi years ago and was kept under watch but that he was allowed to travel abroad for medical treatment, including a trip to France a few months ago.
"He was a tyrant, a pharaoh," Jalloud said of Gaddafi. "He was one who managed the state like he wanted."
Jalloud said he suspected Gaddafi was either hiding in southern Tripoli and would try escaping disguised as a woman, or was near the Algerian border or in his hometown of Sirte with the aim of crossing the desert into a country like Chad.
"Noone knows where Gaddafi is but in the last few months he was on the move continuously, one night he would sleep in a hospital and another night in a mosque," he said.
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