Rambling Gaddafi lectures Europe

Mercurial Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi came in from the cold today when he made a VIP visit to EC headquarters in Brussels, declaring his readiness to work with the West peacefully after years of championing armed struggle against it.

“I would like to seize the opportunity today and declare before you … that Libya is determined and committed to play a leading role in achieving world peace,” he said in a rambling address.

Surrounded by his trademark young female bodyguards, he said Libya “did its duty” in the past by supporting and training violent “liberation movements” around the world and was “unjustly accused of terrorism” for it.

“But now, the time has now come to reap the fruits of this armed struggle, namely peace, stability, development,” he said through a translator.

“Now we are facing different or new challenges which are common enemies to all of us.”

European Commission President Romano Prodi, a former Italian premier who invited Gaddafi to Brussels, fidgeted at his side as Gaddafi lectured the room, veering from history lessons on colonialism to Europe’s need for immigrants to replace an ageing population in the labour market.

Three of Gaddafi’s female bodyguards, dressed in blue camouflage fatigues, stood at attention behind them as Gaddafi spoke for about half an hour, taking no questions afterwards.

In introductory remarks, Prodi said he welcomed Gaddafi’s ”bold moves” in renouncing weapons of mass destruction and promised to help normalise relations.

“We need to work together on peace, stability, migration, security, economic reform and cultural cooperation,” Prodi said. “This is the essence of our new neighbourhood policy, within which Libya must find its place.”

The meeting with the press – the only one scheduled during Gaddafi’s two-day visit – was preceded by an incident shortly after Gaddafi pulled up in a white limousine at the European Commission.

Dressed in a brown cloak and black cap, he waved and gave a clenched fist salute to about 200 cheering supporters – and a handful of protesters kept across the street – before entering the building.

As he paused to shake hands with Prodi for photographers, a man rushed forward trying to hand him a letter and was hustled away by a male bodyguard, while the letter went flying overhead. The female bodyguards then rushed to his side, but Gaddafi ignored the bedlam.

The landmark trip resulted from what the EU termed Libya’s ”remarkable progress” in shedding its rogue nation status, including abandoning its nuclear weapons program and settling the Pan Am and UTA airliner bombing cases.

The 1988 bombing of the Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 people. The French UTA airliner bombing over the Niger desert killed 170 people in 1989.

The United States last week lifted most of its commercial sanctions on Libya but trade restrictions with Europe remain.

Gaddafi seeks “full normalisation” of relations and entry to the aid and trade programme the EU runs with countries around the Mediterranean, including Israel.

Amnesty International, which in February made its first visit to Libya in 15 years, released a report today accusing Libya of a “pattern of ongoing human rights violations” and of fostering a “climate of fear” in which most Libyans are afraid to speak out.

The group criticised Libya for criminalising “the peaceful exercise of freedom of expression and association,” detaining dissidents for long periods without access to outsiders and “unfair trials”.

“Torture and ill-treatment (of prisoners) continues to be widely-reported, its main use being to extract ‘confessions’,” Amnesty said.

Belgian officials said human rights would be raised in the context of Libya’s aspiration to join the Euro-Mediterranean partnership. “Definitely there is a human rights aspect” to that, said Belgian foreign ministry spokesman Patrick Herman.

The application will have to be approved by EU governments.

About 50 anti-Gaddafi demonstrators protested peacefully blocks away from the commission building, in front of the European Parliament.

“Gaddafi’s a criminal. Gaddafi’s a terrorist. Gaddafi’s an assassin,” said Fathi Abdelsalam, a Libyan living in Switzerland. “He has done a lot of crimes in Libya, but the European Union has invited him and receive him as a good president, but that’s not true.”

Gaddafi’s last trip to Europe was in 1989, when he delivered a disjointed harangue against Jews and the US dollar at a summit of non-aligned nations in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.