European nations deny Libya visit for anniversary

EUROPEAN governments have denied claims by Libyan organisers that they are to send top leaders to celebrations in Tripoli for the 40th anniversary of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

France denied claims that President Nicolas Sarkozy would attend, and Russia said President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would also stay away.

An official in Sarkozy’s office said the president would be represented by an official “of a rank which has to be decided”.

Sarkozy welcomed Gaddafi to Paris in 2007, five months after France helped negotiate the release of a group of Bulgarian nurses who were being held in a Libyan jail, and France has been cautiously developing ties.

“President Medvedev was invited to attend the ceremony in Libya, but his agenda was already fixed and he will not go to Libya,” a source in the Russian presidential administration told the Interfax news agency.

“On September 1, Vladimir Putin will be in Gdansk at the invitation of Poland (to mark the outbreak of World War II). This visit has been agreed in advance,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told Interfax.

Rome confirmed that Berlusconi is to travel to Tripoli on Sunday, but said the visit was to mark the first anniversary of a friendship treaty under which Italy invests in its former colony as compensation for imperial exactions. It said there would be no official Italian representation at the Gaddafi commemorations.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has announced he will attend.