Hillary Clinton says Gaddafi is increasingly isolated The meeting in the United Arab Emirates is expected to firm up plans to set up a fund to help the Libyan rebels.
Meanwhile Tripoli has denied allegations of war crimes made at a UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva.
Top officials from the Contact Group - which includes Britain, France and the US, as well as Arab allies Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar - are meeting in Abu Dhabi to prepare for the post-Gaddafi era in Libya.
At the start of the talks, Mrs Clinton said: "As time passes, maintaining our resolve and unity only grows more important.
"Alongside our military mission to protect the Libyan people, we must continue to escalate the political, diplomatic and financial pressure on Gaddafi and his regime.
"Time is on our side - but we know we must sustain the pressure. Gaddafi's isolation is growing, as evidenced by the increasing number of calls for his departure."
'Viagra pills'
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Gita Saghal, former Amnesty campaigner: "Rape is used as a weapon of war"
The abuses include murder, torture, and indiscriminate attacks on civilians allegedly committed by pro-Gaddafi forces, as well as serious violations by rebel forces.
Libyan diplomat Mustafa Shaban told members that his government was "the victim of a widespread aggression" and blamed the media, opposition and foreign mercenaries for human rights abuses, including "acts of cannibalism".
In a separate development, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said there was evidence that Col Gaddafi had ordered the rape of hundreds of women as a weapon of war against rebel forces.
He said he was looking into allegations that security forces had been given medication such as Viagra to enhance their sex drive.
In March, a Libyan woman, Eman al-Obeidi, made headlines around the world after she burst into a Tripoli hotel and said she had been raped by pro-Gaddafi troops. She is recovering at a refugee centre in Romania.
Testimony from captured Libyan soldiers that rape was used as a systematic weapon of war was taken by the BBC's Africa correspondent Andrew Harding in May.
In other developments:
- Italy is to provide Libyan rebels with up to 400m euros ($586m; £360m) of cash and fuel aid backed by frozen Libyan assets, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini is quoted as saying by Reuters
- The rebel transitional council says it wants to restart oil production at fields under its control, at the rate of around 100,000 barrels a day, but has given no time-frame
- US military operations in Libya are on course to cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than the Pentagon estimated, according to figures obtained by the Financial Times
It was not immediately clear what was targeted in the air strike, but it reportedly hit an area close to Col Gaddafi's residence.
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