22Dec03-Jonathan Wright-Gaddafi Worked for Years for Breakthrough with West
Mon December 22, 2003 12:42 PM ET
By Jonathan Wright
CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, after many years trying to come in from the cold, may be on the verge of seeing his dream at last come true.
In January 1989, two weeks before former President Bush took office, Gaddafi paraded around Tripoli's best hotel, pounding his fist in the air for dramatic effect but with a message that belied his defiant gestures.
With President Ronald Reagan on the way out, he told reporters the time had come for Libya and the United States to put the past behind them and make friends.
Many of the twists and turns in Libyan policy for the next decade and a half had their roots in Gaddafi's campaign to restore relations with Washington -- a step which Gaddafi saw as essential to Libya's economic future.
But almost a whole generation had to pass before Bush promised Friday to reward the North African country for Gaddafi's decision to give up its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.
The Libyan announcement of the decision took by surprise those unaware of months of secret negotiations, but analysts of Libyan policy said it was a logical step in a long-term trend.
"It's the culmination of a policy that started in 1987. That's when he realized there was a vulnerability about being a small state," said George Joffe, a Libya expert at the Center of International Studies at Cambridge University in England.
Gaddafi had irritated the United States throughout the 1970s and 1980s by supporting radical causes in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. The United States bombed Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986 on the grounds that Libya was behind a bombing which killed two Americans in a Berlin discotheque.
INTIMIDATION
Reagan sought to provoke and intimidate Libya by sending U.S. warships into the Gulf of Sirte, which Libya claimed as part of its territorial waters. When the Libyans bit at the bait, U.S. forces attacked Libyan patrol boats and shot down two Libyan planes sent out to reconnoiter .
Mohammed Faiz Jibreel, a Libyan exile opposed to Gaddafi, said it took longer before the Libyan leader started to change tack. The big change came when the United States showed its military might in the Balkan wars in the mid-1990s, he said.
The Balkan example was instrumental in persuading Libya in 1998 to agree to hand over two men accused of planting a bomb on the Pan Am plane which exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, killing 270 people, Jibreel said.
U.S. and British preparations to invade Iraq earlier this year accelerated the trend, as did the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in April, he added.
"After the U.S. air strikes on Serbia, Gaddafi decided to give up. Then this year, when he saw the willingness of the big powers to use their strength, he was afraid he would end up the same way that Saddam ended up," he said.
Diaa Rashwan, an analyst at the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said he saw the writing on the wall at several junctures as Gaddafi abandoned the Arab nationalist cause and turned his back on the Palestinians, many of whom had to leave Libya in recent years.
"STATE OF MASSES" Gaddafi seized power in 1969 as a loyal follower of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Arab nationalist hero of the age. He then embarked on a unique experiment in "direct democracy" based on neighborhood town hall meetings and the abolition of all large-scale private enterprises.
His critics said the experiment was a cover for authoritarian rule and complete state control of the economy. Analysts say it has helped impoverish the country.
Joffe said Gaddafi's own plans for economic reform happened to match the expectations of the Bush administration, for whom democracy and market economics go hand in hand.
"Changes are happening because Gaddafi recognizes that the economy is in a mess. There is 30 percent unemployment and inflation went up to between 13 to 17 percent," he said.
"They have an investment plan for $35 billion and 40 percent of that is to come from foreign sources. That forces liberalization and privatization," he added.
On the political front, Libya would evolve from a jamahiriya, Gaddafi's invented word for a "state of the masses," into a jumhuriya, the usual Arabic word for republic, he said.
Opponents of Gaddafi say part of the plan is to set the stage to install his son, Saif al-Islam, as successor. Under that scenario, better relations with the United States and Britain would help to guarantee a smooth transition.
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