Libya: 15 years of isolation brought to an end - The Independent, Dec.1
Gaddafi comes back in from the diplomatic cold as thaw brings for rest of the world
15 years of isolation brought to an end as first Western leader comes
calling on Tripoli with oilmen and carpetbaggers hard on his heels
By Caroline Hawley in Tripoli
1 December 1999
Libya's emergence from international isolation takes a big step forward
today with the arrival of the Italian Prime Minister, Massimo D'Alema, the
first Western leader to pay a visit for 15 years.
Crowning Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's drive to bring his country out of
the diplomatic cold, Mr D'Alema will fly to Tripoli international airport,
now slowly returning to life after a seven-year United Nations air
embargo. Flights were banned in 1992 to force Libya to hand over two
nationals suspected of involvement in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
With sanctions now suspended, Italy, the former colonial power in
Libya, has wasted no time in leading a European thaw in relations. The
Italian Foreign Minister, Lamberto Dini, flew to Tripoli in April, the day
after UN sanctions were lifted. "Libya will become Italy's bridge to
Africa," Colonel Gaddafi told him at the time, "and for Libya, Italy will be
its door into Europe".
According to rumours in Rome, Libyan officials have asked that Mr
D'Alema should personally invite Colonel Gaddafi to make a reciprocal
visit to Italy, which ruled Libya between 1911 and 1943. Although the
request has not been officially confirmed, such a visit to a key member
of the European Union and Nato would be a diplomatic coup for the
Libyan leader and his policy of greater openness.
Britain is joining the thaw in relations with Libya. A new British
ambassador, Richard Dalton, is expected in Tripoli later this month,
after Libya's payment of compensation to the family of Yvonne
Fletcher, the policewoman killed in 1984 by shots fired from inside the
Libyan People's Bureau in central London.
The Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, announced last week that the
payment removed "the last obstacle to the restoration of full diplomatic
relations", broken off more than 15 years ago.
Earlier this year, Tripoli also paid compensation to the families of 170
people who died when a French aircraft exploded over the desert in
Niger in 1989, the year after the Lockerbie bombing. A French court
had sentenced six Libyans, including Colonel Gaddafi's brother-in-law,
to life imprisonment in absentia for their role in the bombing.
European companies are also clamouring to do business with Libya,
which needs foreign investment in its oil industry and to help to put its
aircraft, grounded for seven years, back safely into international skies.
Libya is also hoping to lure tourists to its well-preserved, now
deserted, Roman ruins. A poster in the Wahat hotel in central Tripoli
invites people - in English - to visit "the Great Libyan Jamahiriya", or
Republic of the Masses.
The new approach appears to be playing well with the masses. "It feels
good to make contact with the world again," said Sadeq Saoud, a
mechanical engineer. "People can travel again easily for work and
medical treatment, and we can have tourists come here - we have
1,000km of nice beaches. We want peace with the world."
As relations with the West have warmed, Libya's leader is also turning
his hand to peace-making within Africa. A joint peace drive with Egypt
this summer to try to end the continent's longest-running civil war, in
Sudan, added to a growing portfolio of peace initiatives stemming from
Tripoli.
Yesterday, peace with Libya's southern neighbour, Chad, was the talk
of the capital. Chad's President, Idriss Deby, was here heading a
300-strong delegation to celebrate the ninth anniversary of his coming
to power. Libya fought a bitter war with the previous Chadian
government in the Eighties. But yesterday, the Hall of the People in
Tripoli echoed with chants of unity, as Colonel Gaddafi and Mr Deby
addressed a throng of Chadians, Libyan officers in olive-green
uniforms, white-robed tribal leaders and diplomats. Relatives of
Libyans who died in the war were flown to Tripoli from all over the
country for the ceremony. The Libyan leader, dressed in salmon pink
robes with a matching hat, spoke at length on his favourite theme,
African unity, a cause he has now taken up after years of espousing
Arab nationalism. "Africans must put their shoulders together to build a
united Africa, strong like the European Union or the United States," he
said, playing his new role of the continent's elder statesman.
The theme was reinforced by a huge map of Africa hanging in the hall,
with Libya coloured green and fringed with gold. Thirty years in power,
and changing world events, have not dimmed Colonel Gaddafi's
revolutionary rhetoric. There was no liberation movement in the world
that his country had not supported, he boasted. Libya would be ready
to do so again he said "to defend the cause of freedom and defeat the
common enemy" - presumably a reference to American "imperialism".
The door may be open, but Washington does not yet appear to be
welcome.
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