With breathtaking speed, Libya has given up a program to develop nuclear weapons, surrendered its bombmaking equipment, destroyed chemical munitions shells, invited human rights inspectors to the country and opened its once-closed economy to trade and investment. U.S. officials are scouring Libya's capital, Tripoli, searching for the site of a new embassy more than 20 years after breaking diplomatic relations.
Gaddafi's effort to transform Libya is perhaps the sharpest turnabout in his career. Once, he was a self-styled liberator of the Arab world and then all of Africa, and a supporter of what were called national liberation movements in South Africa, Palestine, the Basque country and Northern Ireland. Now, he describes himself as a peace-seeking realist coming to grips with a world order dominated by the United States. "Our people are enlightened and aware of new realities," he said Wednesday in an interview with several reporters.
Diplomats attribute the shift to a fear of hostile relations with the United States and to internal pressure in his impoverished and stagnant country with a population of about 5.5 million. Gaddafi is seeking to both placate the United States at a time when the Bush administration has said it reserves the right to carry out preemptive attacks on countries it considers a danger and subdue lingering, Islamic-based opposition to his rule through economic revival.
Gaddafi said he sees a bright future in relations with Washington, once his avowed enemy. "We are optimistic," he said, speaking at a government compound outside Sirte, his home town on the Mediterranean coast. "The problem was, we have not had a chance for dialogue. Now we can talk."
As for opposition from Muslim political groups, Gaddafi dismissed the role of Islam in politics. "We don't want to involve God in questions of infrastructure and sewerage, technology and water. Islam equals God. How can we involve it in such daily affairs?"
Gaddafi began his years in power citing Islam as a pillar of his rule, but later he tacked on pan-Arab revolution, socialism and anti-colonialism as the official state ideology. The mixture upset Islamic traditionalists, and Libya has suffered periodic unrest largely attributed to Muslim opposition groups. In the late 1990s, Gaddafi survived at least two assassination attempts, one blamed on a shadowy organization called the Islamic Martyrs Movement. The Muslim Brotherhood, a longtime, sometimes-violent pan-Arab organization, also operates in Libya, foreign observers in Tripoli say.
"Islam is the main alternative here, as it is all over the Arab world," said one diplomat. "Gaddafi has decided to play the Western card to fight it."
Until the late 1990s, retail stores were forbidden in Libya, and industry, including oil production, was in the hands of the government. Now, Gaddafi has allowed private businesses to open and plans to privatize industries other than oil. Libya also hopes to attract foreign investment into light industry and to modernize oil fields, which provide 95 percent of the country's export earnings. Libya also wants to increase its OPEC production quota. "This is a kind of Chinese-style liberalization. Like the Communist Party in China, Gaddafi wants to harness the globalized economy to stay in power," said the diplomat.
While Gaddafi is giving up Libya's attempt to build weapons of mass destruction, political liberalization is not on the table.
Last week, Libya took another major step in ridding itself of weapons banned under international agreements. It destroyed 3,300 shells capable of delivering chemical agents and is preparing to create a list of its stockpiles, according to international inspectors. Rogelio Pfirter, an official from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said the Libyans used bulldozers to crush the shells after they had been defused. Pfirter, speaking in The Hague, praised Libya for the "cooperative spirit of compliance."
washingtonpost.com |
