Libyan Leader Holds Court at Summit
By SUSAN LINNEE, Associated Press Writer
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) April 4 - An affable, gracious Moammar Gadhafi held court Tuesday on the sidelines of the historic African-European summit, receiving everyone from the chancellor of European powerhouse Germany to the president of the small West African nation of Gambia.
The Libyan leader is using the Cairo summit, as he has other international gatherings in the past year, to paint himself as Africa's senior statesman and conscience.
Gadhafi, who has sought to improve ties with European nations, lambasted Europe for its continuing arrogance toward Africa.
``Until we make sure that Europe does not want to colonize us or conspire against us, and until we are ready to tell our peoples that we trust Europe, you have to stop hatching coups, extending bribes and manipulating ethnic contradictions,' Gadhafi told a working session of the summit on Monday.
On Tuesday, Gadhafi, resplendent in flowing rose-colored damask robes, received callers in a vestibule at one end of the long hall outside the room where leaders from 52 African nations and the 15 members of the European Union were discussing human rights, good governance and the rule of law.
Waiters swooped in and out serving glasses of black and anise tea and tiny cups of thick coffee as Gadhafi's single female guard, dressed in military fatigues, a red beret and gold bracelets watched from a corner.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar made way for German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, with whom Gadhafi chatted about the recent 70th birthday of his predecessor, Helmut Kohl.
Next was Austrian Prime Minister Wolfgang Schuessel, who described his conversation with Gadhafi as ``cordial and worthwhile.'
Asked to react to Gadhafi's anti-European outburst, European Commission President Romano Prodi advised patience.
``Firmness, too. We need time,' he said, adding that when he met with Gadhafi on Monday, they talked about Mediterranean policy, ``which remains important.'
Even before the United Nations suspended sanctions against Libya a year ago after two Libyan suspects were surrendered for trial in the bombing of a Pan Am airliner, African nations were already welcoming Gadhafi back into the fold.
He was officially reinstated at the Organization of African Unity summit in Algeria in June 1999, where he pitched a tent next to the Sheraton hotel, which he derided as a symbol of American imperialism.
At his own summit last September in Libya, he got African delegates to sign on to a plan for an African union by next year.
Asked about a possible warming of relations with the United States, which has treated him as the bad boy of Africa since his troops invaded Chad in late 1980, Gadhafi paused and said slowly in English: ``I think America has reviewed its policy toward Libya and discovered that it is wrong. But then, you know, there is the oil crisis .... It is a good time for America to change its policy toward Libya.'
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