DVTimes

A power mad dictator is to meet Col Gaddafi

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3476155.stm

The proposed visit by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi will mark the end of a remarkable process in which former enemies have become, if not exactly friends, then allies of convenience.
The mercurial Col Gaddafi, whose agents brought down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, whose military supplied arms to the Provisonal IRA, and one of whose diplomats shot dead a British policewoman, has not met the fate of Saddam Hussein.

Instead, thanks to his willingness to show extreme flexibiilty - handing over his agents for the Lockerbie trial, paying compensation to the relatives, ending his weapons of mass destruction work - he will receive Mr Blair, probably in his desert tent, sometime this year if all goes well.

And "going well" means, according to British sources, continued progress on dismantling the Libyan WMD programme.

His fortune was also not to commit any of his misdeeds during the watch of the current US administration. It would be hard to see him surviving the attentions of President Bush if he attacked an American plane under present conditions.

Police promise

UK officials say that Britain is not setting as a condition for a Blair visit the handing over of a suspect in the shooting of Pc Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984.

Instead, Britain has a promise of "enhanced co-operation" which may see British police officers go to Libya at some stage.

Whether any charges will result is not at all clear. Libya may have its own demands.

At the news conference in the Foreign Office at which the visit was announced, Mohammed Abdulrahman Shalgam, the Libyan Foreign Minister (actually the Secretary of the General People's Committee for Foreign Liaison and International Co-operation), cryptically mentioned reports of a British plot to assassinate his leader "Brother Muammar Gaddafi, leader of the Great September Revolution".

These reports came from a former British intelligence officer, David Shayler, and it appears that Libya is keeping this issue as a card up its sleeve in case Britain gets too demanding.

Language problems

It was fascinating to watch Mr Shalgam justify the Libyan change of position on WMD.

Asked by a Arab journalist if Libya had not made too many concessions, he replied: "Concessions is not a good expression."

He rejected suggestions that Libya had been in "fear" after what happened to Iraq. Instead, it turned out that, according to his account, Libya had rejected weapons of mass destruction some years ago and had published its stand as Article 23 of its Green Book on policy issues.

And apparently it was the media's fault for this fact not being widely known.

Mr Shalgam told journalists, among whom he was numbered himself at one stage: "You did not know our language and those who did failed to tell you."

He accused unnamed people of trying to "poison" relations betwen Libya and the West. "You can accuse but you cannot lie," he told the reporters and did one see Foreign Secretary Jack Straw smiling?

Mr Shalgam did admit that Libya worked on these weapons, however. "We had the equipment and material and the know-how and the scientists. We decided not to produce such weapons."

Then the clincher: "If you have flour, water and fire, you do not necessarily make bread."

Minor masterpiece

The news conference was a minor masterpiece of diplomatic choreography, which had started when the foreign secretary not the prime minister welcomed the Libyan to Downing Street.

Mr Blair "dropped in" on their talks. But he did not drop in at the news event. That would have been too much of a concession.

So it was left to Mr Straw to pronounce all the niceties.

And he went a bit further. He wanted to see "all countries, including the United States" normalise relations with Libya and he wanted the European Union to end its arms embargo.

Things have indeed changed with Libya.

And the Blair-Gaddafi project will change them even more.

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