Gaddafi offers peace and threatens terror

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, once considered one of the world’s most dangerous men, came to Europe for the first time in 15 years today offering an olive branch and business deals.

But he also came with a veiled threat of a return to violence if provoked by “evil” from the West.

The one-time pariah turned peace advocate swept through the normally staid headquarters of the European Union in Brussels like a film star in brown Bedouin robes, flanked by his trademark young female bodyguards in blue camouflage uniforms.

He gave a clenched fist salute to about 200 supporters outside the building while a smattering of protesters barricaded across the street shouted ““Gaddafi murderer!”

Inside, as Gaddafi and his host, EC President Romano Prodi, posed for photographers, a man pretending to be a security guard slipped forward and tried to hand Gaddafi a letter before being hustled away, shouting as the paper went flying overhead.

Gaddafi, stone-faced, ignored the bedlam and continued shaking hands with a grinning Prodi.

Upstairs in his office, Prodi presented Gaddafi with a boxed set of euro coins and a “pen to sign our friendship.” When Gaddafi jokingly asked what the coins were worth, Prodi responded: “Only 20 euros. It’s not a big value.”

After three hours of talks, Prodi declared himself “very happy” about the historic visit, which he said he worked five years to arrange.

But even Prodi began fidgeting uncomfortably as Gaddafi rambled on for half an hour to hundreds of journalists gathered for their only scheduled chance to hear him speak during the two-day visit.

“It goes without saying this is a very historic meeting,” Gaddafi began, speaking through a translator as three of his female bodyguards stood to attention behind him.

Gaddafi declared his readiness to work with the West peacefully after years of championing armed struggle against it.

“Libya did its duty when duty had to be done by arms,” he said. That included firing missiles at US fighter aircraft in the 1980s and setting up training camps for ”freedom fighters” from around the developing world, for which he said Libya was “unjustly” accused of a “kind of terrorism.”

Now that Libya has given up its weapons programmes, it has become “an example to be followed,” he asserted, calling on countries “from China to America” to do the same.

“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.

“The time has now come to reap the fruits of this armed struggle, namely peace, stability, development. Now we are facing different or new challenges which are common enemies to all of us.”

Noting Libya’s huge gas and oil reserves, he said European and US companies were needed “to update and modernise the wells and to develop them".

“This requires peace,” he said, hinting at a possible motivation for his change of heart.

He promised to cooperate on curbing illegal immigration – a crucial issue across the EU.

Yet he concluded by warning that an upsurge in violence across the Mideast could undo Libya’s conversion, apparently referring to the US-led occupation of Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“I hope we shall not be prompted or obliged by any evil to go back or look backward,” he said. “We do hope we shall not be forced one day to go back to those days where we bomb or put explosive belts around our women, so we shall not be harassed in our bedrooms and homes as is taking place in Iraq and Palestine.”

He said the victims of the latest violence “are women and children and the battlefield has become the kitchen and the bedroom and the lounge.

“We don’t want to be forced to do that,” he said. “We say to America and declare also to Europe, we say it confidently and loudly, we should not miss this opportunity.”

Neither Gaddafi nor Prodi took questions afterward.

The visit was intended to help pave the way for normalisation of relations between the EU and Libya, following recent visits to Tripoli by Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair and Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who coincidentally met in Downing Street in England today .

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

Libya’s recent settling of the Pan Am and UTA airliner bombing cases contributed to the recent rapprochement. The 1988 bombing of the Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 people and the French UTA airliner bombing over the Niger desert killed 170 people in 1989.

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.

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

Gaddafi was also meeting Belgian political and business leaders before leaving tomorrow. A black Bedouin prayer tent was erected for him outside a government-owned chateau on the leafy outskirts of Brussels.

His 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.