February 19, 2004. Copyright, 2004, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Profile of LibyaÕs Muammar Gaddafi, the leader called in from the cold
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, February 19, Graphic News:  It is probably safe to say that the rehabilitation of Muammar Gaddafi owes more to the new global political climate than to any mellowing of the volatile Libyan leader. Yet it does not entirely explain how AfricaÕs onetime enfant terrible has turned into the westÕs prodigal son.

Libyan foreign minister Abdulrahman ShalgamÕs recent meeting with his British counterpart Jack Straw in London was widely seen as heralding a warmer era in UK-Libyan relations, and Prime Minister Blair is expected to meet Colonel Gaddafi in Libya later this year. Gaddafi was called in from the cold following his announcement in December that Tripoli was disbanding its weapons of mass destruction. Washington has since announced that it will lift travel restrictions and consider providing aid.

The turnaround is unparallelled if one considers the long list of crimes for which the West has held Gaddafi responsible, including the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie and the 1989 bombing of the French UTA DC-10 over Niger. Since desposing King Idris in 1969, LibyaÕs leader has sponsored terrorist groups from radical Palestinians to the IRA -- an attitude that led to the U.S. 1986 bombing of Tripoli and UN sanctions. Britain broke off ties after policewoman Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead outside the Libyan Embassy in London in 1984.

But then Gaddafi, born to a Bedouin family in 1942, has always been different. Film footage of him tossing banknotes at the poor out of his car as his motorcade rolled through Africa, or dressed in designer clothes and surrounded by female bodyguards, or greeting foreign visitors in a desert tent, presented the image of a leader almost too idiosyncratic to simply despise. 

And the idiosyncracy ran deeper. A secret profile compiled by the British Embassy in Tripoli in 1972 and released in 2003 described him as having a Òcrazy logicÓ. In his 1977 Green Book, Gaddafi presented the Third Universe Plan, a unique blend of Islam and socialism that rejected both communism and capitalism. That year he declared that Libya was a ÒJamahiriyaÓ -- a state of the masses -- ruled by committees. Today his title remains simply Òguide to the revolutionÓ, a fact that may complicate handing over the reins to favoured son Saif al-Islam.
 
Ultimately, his maverick style and support for dubious causes probably prevented him from achieving his ÒcallingÓ to become a regional Arab leader in the mould of the former Egyptian president, Gamal Abd al-Nasser. He appeared to take his neighboursÕ rejection to heart, telling an interviewer in 2001: ÒAfrica is closer to me in every way than Iraq or SyriaÓ. 

Similarly, last yearÕs white paper in which he called for the establishment of ÒIsraetineÓ as a solution to the Middle East conflict appeared to mark a shift away from the cause of Arab nationalism. But there had already been signs that the young rebel had mellowed; in 2000 he brokered the release of German hostages held by Islamic militants in the Philippines, and more recently he intervened to aid the freeing of Europeans held in Algeria. At home, he has backed away from socialism, announcing plans to privatise failing state monopolies.

Observers say that Gaddafi now wants the West to forget LibyaÕs rebellious reputation. His country needs more money for its oil and the removal of sanctions, and he has greased the palm of friendship with huge payouts to terror victims and information on al-Qaeda suspects. But thatÕs not all; by presenting his return to the fold as a sanctions success story, the West may have won more time to explain away those other, missing, weapons of mass destruction.
/ENDS