Serbian President Boris Tadić has sent a telegram of condolences to Lybian leader Muammar Gaddafi and the Lybian people. This gesture came in the wake of an airplane crash that killed 103 people near Tripoli on Wednesday morning.
Posts Tagged ‘muammar gaddafi’
Kashmir should be an independent buffer state between India, Pak: Gaddafi
September 24th, 2009 |
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In a 90-minute candid and at times vitriolic speech directed at delegates attending the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi demanded that Kashmir be declared an independent state between India and Pakistan.
During his first appearance before the UNGA, Gaddafi ranted about the United States and other Western powers. [...]
Taking liberties?
September 1st, 2009 |
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By Paul Wood
BBC News, Tripoli
It is a rule of thumb in any Middle Eastern country that the more pictures of the leader you see, the less political freedom there is.
In Tripoli, Colonel Gaddafi is everywhere. He stares down from every traffic roundabout and every official building.
Ever flamboyant, sometimes he is in colourful African robes, sometimes in Bedouin head-dress (and usually with his own idiosyncratic interpretation of these styles).
Occasionally he sports the large mirrored sun-glasses favoured by comic-strip dictators and 1970s porn stars.
Here and there, you catch a glimpse of a much younger Muammar Gaddafi, a reminder that he came to power 40 years ago in a military coup aged just 27, when his rank was a mere captain.
He promoted himself to colonel. Others might have given themselves the rank of field marshal, or at least general.
But Col Gaddafi said Libya was a true people’s democracy. Even today, he has no official government position but is referred to as "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution".
Rare dissent
Libya is, though, not a democracy as that term is understood in Europe or America.
One measure of that is how difficult it was to find anyone inside the country prepared to make even the slightest criticism of the regime.
"It is disaster for Libya to have this regime for 40 years, the UK, France, Italy, I don’t know why they support this dictatorship "
Jamal al-Haggi
Libyan dissident
With the help of the international monitoring group Human Rights Watch, one dissident was prepared to say what many Libyans may be thinking but are too fearful to express.
Thanks to Western pressure, Jamal al-Haggi was freed earlier this year after serving two years of a 12-year sentence. He was only too well aware that meeting foreign journalists was extremely risky.
A small, neat man and an accountant by profession, Mr Haggi said he had been unable to work since leaving prison.
He said he was prepared to go to jail again, but did not want to get anyone else into trouble.
So we conducted the interview in the back of a car driving around Tripoli, rather than go to his home or someone’s office.
Embarrassing questions
"Yes it is dangerous, I am not safe," he said, acknowledging that "insulting public officials" or "opposing the ideology of the revolution" are criminal offences that could result in a 25-year jail sentence.
But he went on: "I am not afraid. There is nothing else to lose."
A brave statement, but one in defiance of the facts in a country where the death penalty remains on the books for joining or forming any independent political party opposed to the Libyan revolution.
"People didn’t vote for it [the Gadaffi regime], it came by force," he said.
"So this is not a celebration for everyone; just for a few people who are doing well out of the system."
He added: "It is disaster for Libya to have this regime for 40 years. There is no freedom here; there is no democracy. The UK, France, Italy, I don’t know why they support this dictatorship – but we will never forget."
Western leaders did not attend Col Gaddafi’s big party in Tripoli.
British ministerial attendance would only have raised embarrassing Lockerbie questions, of course.
The West may be desperate to win lucrative trade deals from the Libyan leader, but governments are still wary of his regime.
While Libya’s relations with the West have been transformed, internal reform is slow and small.
That may not change as long as Col Gadaffi remains – and four decades on, his grip on power seems as sure and as strong as ever.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
President, defense chief travel to Libya
August 31st, 2009 |
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President Boris Tadić and Defense Minister Dragan Å utanovac will travel to Tripoli for Tuesday’s celebrations of the 40th anniversary of Libyan revolution. Their trip comes on Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi’s invitation.
Gaddafi demands Lockerbie bomber’s return
July 10th, 2009 |
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Prime minister tells Libyan leader at G8 summit that Megrahi case is matter for the Scottish courts
In his first face to face meeting with Gordon Brown, Muammar Gaddafi today demanded the return of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.
The Libyan leader was told by the prime minister that it was a matter for the Scottish courts.
Gaddafi, wearing a flowing black and white silken robe and protected by female bodyguards, is at the G8 summit in Italy as the rotating president of the African Union.
He has pitched a bedouin-style tent outside the G8 barracks in which world leaders are staying during the three-day summit.
In a 40-minute meeting between the two leaders, conducted in Arabic and English, Brown insisted he could not intervene in the Megrahi case.
Scottish judges this week delayed completing an appeal into Megrahi’s conviction until at least September, even though he has prostate cancer and faces a risk of dying in prison.
The bombing of flight Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 killed 270 people on the aircraft and the ground.
Gaddafi’s demand for the return of Megrahi was countered by Brown urging him to do more to cooperate with the Metropolitan police investigation into the shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in 1984.
Her murder led to the severing of diplomatic ties between the two countries for a decade, but Gaddafi subsequently worked to improve relations with the west, so much so that Tony Blair went to Tripoli to meet him in 2004.
The Libyans have admitted responsibility for Fletcher’s killing by embassy staff and have paid compensation, but Britain is complaining that Libya is not producing witnesses, meaning the inquiry has stalled for more than a year.
Brown also called on Gaddafi to help bring about the return of six-year-old Nadia Fawzi, who was abducted by her Libyan father in 2007.
Her English mother, Sarah Taylor, wants her daughter returned, and Gaddafi promised Brown that the Libyan courts were on course to reunite the two shortly.
More broadly, Brown – who was accompanied by three UK officials – also urged Gaddafi to use his influence to persuade Middle Eastern countries to renounce nuclear weapons.
It is not clear whether Gaddafi has any influence over the Iranian regime.
The 67-year-old leader, wearing dark glasses for much of the day and sporting long dark hair, resembled an ageing rock legend and was generally seen as the star of today’s meetings.
Brown praised him for abandoning his chemical weapons programme unilaterally in 2003, a move intended to bring about a normalisation of relations with the west.
The two leaders also agreed to work together to bring stability to the oil market, with Brown promising to use his influence to improve African representation on the boards of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
British officials admitted the meeting had started formally, but gradually warmed up as discussions continued.
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Libya’s struggles
July 9th, 2009 |
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Travelling to the Libyan town of Sirte to report on the African Union summit, Christian Fraser considers whether Libya is ready for an era of mass tourism.
It is midnight at Tripoli airport, across the road from the arrivals hall. Beyond high mesh fences and the white glare of towering floodlights, a Chinese workforce is labouring through the night on a new terminal.
The air is hot and heavy. The face of Muammar Gaddafi stares out from a nearby billboard, as if micromanaging his country’s construction boom.
En route to the African Union summit, I had just emerged from the old arrivals hall – dour, disorganised and full of government spooks. I was delayed for an inordinate amount of time while they checked, then rechecked, that rarest of Libyan commodities, a journalist’s visa.
The two faces of Libya, a perfect illustration of where the country has come from, and where it is going.
Once the international pariah, now a state in full-speed transition.
Embracing capitalism
In the past year, Muammar Gaddafi has travelled the world signing profitable oil and gas deals that will help transform Tripoli into the new Mediterranean destination – or so they hope – for an influx of adventurous tourists.
There is still some way to go, but the beachfront is awash with five-star developments the government is building with its millions of petrodollars. No more sanctions, no more socialism.
"Twenty-five thousand new flats," beamed Ahmed, my government minder, as we sped into town past another busy building site – $200,000 (£125,000) each," he marvelled.
I could tell he was an enthusiastic proponent of the new Libyan capitalism. And a loyal subject – a Gaddafi key-ring was hanging from his trouser pocket.
Tourist restrictions
There is much to see and enjoy in Libya.
Spectacular Greek and Roman remains, the open-air galleries of prehistoric rock art and glorious largely uninhabited sandy beaches.
Plus, of course, that frisson that is always associated with visiting a country previously off-limit to Westerners.
And therein lies the rub. As much as Libya may like the idea of tourists, and the hard currency they bring, it has yet to embrace the reality.
Tourists must still travel in organised groups with a government-approved guide.
There is no opportunity to wander unfettered around the well-preserved Roman city of Leptis Magna or the magnificent theatre at Sabratha.
Accommodation shortage
Pity the poor tourist who runs into the Libyan control freakery I experienced last week on the way to this African Union summit.
It was held in Sirte, an undistinguished coastal town just along the way from Tripoli.
The flight to Sirte is a short one. A journey across a long stretch of barren coastline.
Beneath us those remote beaches from which hundreds of illegal African migrants escape to Europe every year. These are the people currently flooding into Tripoli.
I could see why stopping their advance proves such an enormous challenge. Aside from sporadic roadblocks, there is very little between the vast expanse of Sahara and the shoreline from where they set sail in their makeshift rafts and boats.
The building frenzy of Tripoli is yet to reach the distant outpost of Sirte.
"Mr Gaddafi cruised around his manor in one of those ostentatiously large buses favoured by touring rock stars"
Tourists might find a hotel room, but such was the shortage of accommodation during the summit, that journalists and dignitaries would be sleeping on a clapped-out, Panamanian-registered, car ferry brought in specially for the event.
No five-star facilities, these.
We paid top dollar for a cabin cloaked in the faintest whiff of diesel. Mine was already occupied by a cockroach and each day he raced me for the shower attached to the sink.
When Mr Gaddafi travels abroad he takes a Bedouin tent with him. I should have followed suit.
Closely watched
So why would you drag hundreds of summit delegates, 12 African leaders, diplomats, politicians and journalists to a one-horse town in the middle of nowhere
Simple really. It is the ancestral home of Libya’s egocentric leader, who for 39 years has fostered this one-man personality cult.
Throughout the week, he cruised around his manor in one of those ostentatiously large buses favoured by touring rock stars.
For his opening speech, he wore the golden robes of a king. One invited dignitary was so overcome in his presence, she fell to her knees at his feet.
Not satisfied with this all-encompassing power in Libya, the Colonel is even pushing a bold ambition for a unified continent, a United States of Africa modelled on the European Union.
EU ideals Tell that not just to the journalists, but also the VIPs at this summit who were herded from one location to another, closely observed at all times – and whose contact with the outside world was sorely limited by the electronic equipment used by state security, whenever the Colonel was in town.
Is Mr Gaddafi and his "new Libya" really prepared for all that comes with mass tourism The evidence of this African Union summit suggests not yet.
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This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.