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Gaddafi calls salary form of slavery { March 6 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34586-2004Mar5?language=printerhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34586-2004Mar5?language=printer
Quick Change Suits Libyan Leader
'New Realities,' Gaddafi Says, Are Behind His New Approach
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 6, 2004; Page A01
SIRTE, Libya -- Moammar Gaddafi swept into the reception room in a black-and-white-striped Damascus silk robe covered by a giant brown wool cloak.
He jutted his jaw in the air. It is a characteristic pose that has dominated posters and billboards in Libya for almost 35 years. His hair was as bushy as ever.
But "The Leader," as he is known by all here, had little patience for talk about old times. When a reporter asked whether, in Gaddafi's heart, Libya was responsible for the 1988 bombing of the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people were killed, he moaned softly and said, "Let's not dig that up again."
The choice of words suggested a desire by Gaddafi to quickly put the past behind him, move Libya into a new era and cozy up to the United States and other countries that were once the objects of his wrath.
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."
In contrast to the rapid disarmament, there is no evidence that Gaddafi is preparing to relax his one-man rule. The country is nominally run by what are called people's committees, found in factories, farms, schools and government agencies. Gaddafi says his leadership is based on being the author of the 1969 revolution that unseated Libya's monarchy. The system is enshrined in "The Green Book," Gaddafi's ruling manifesto, which shuns parliaments, political parties and even salaries, which he called a form of slavery. "The Green Book" also preaches the equality of women, although it frequently refers to them as feeble.
A reporter asked Gaddafi whether "The Green Book" was out of date. He said no. "I consider it the guide for all humanity. One day, the whole world will be a republic of the masses, topple down all governments and parliaments."
Gaddafi appears to be taking the first steps toward compliance with international human rights standards. Two weeks ago, Libya hosted representatives of Amnesty International, the human rights organization, for the first time in 15 years. Claudio Cordone, the Amnesty team leader, said that the group was granted "unprecedented access" to government officials but limited access to people they suspected were held in Libyan jails. "We didn't see all those we asked to see," he said.
Libya's human rights stance "remains problematic," Cordone told the Associated Press. "We have people imprisoned solely for the peaceful expression of their views. We have a wide practice of holding people for years without being given access to their families and lawyers, with facilities of torture used often. We have the death penalty for a variety of offenses, including some that criminalize freedom of expression."
Libyans are increasingly bombarded by outside ideas. With government consent, Internet cafes have become commonplace, and satellite television dishes festoon neighborhoods in Libyan towns.
On Wednesday, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) visited Libya, one of a series of U.S. dignitaries to make the trip during the past two months. He spoke to Gaddafi's handpicked General People's Congress, an annual gathering of leaders of the people's committees. The assembly took place in Sirte, which boasts modern housing, numerous hotels, exhibition spaces and the large, marble-clad congress hall.
Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged Libyans to "take the necessary steps to rejoin the community of nations." He reminded them of the civilian losses from the Lockerbie bombing. He declared that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon had "changed the way my country views the world and specifically how it views this region." He said repressive regimes engender extremism.
It was not clear how much the delegates understood. The translator did not keep up with the pace of Biden's speech and appeared to have left out about half. The audience met the speech with light applause and occasional light heckling. One murmured that the United States had created Osama bin Laden. There was general rustling when Biden noted U.S. support for Israel.
After Biden's remarks, a delegate identified as a philosophy professor lectured the visitors on low turnouts in U.S. elections. He said Libya rejected the "democracy of the Zionist lobby" and "subordination."
Another speaker, introduced as representing a committee for the "friendship of peoples," appealed to the Americans to "let bygones be bygones." And another respondent noted that "we have children and wives, too," an apparent reference to the 1986 bombing of Libya by U.S. warplanes in response to a bomb planted in a German nightclub that killed two U.S. soldiers.
Gaddafi fared better at the congress the night before when he laid out the basis for his new approach. He called the thaw in relations with the United States "a great victory and a big achievement." He said Libya had paid for a policy of supporting others. "No one imposed isolation on Libya in the past. We Libyans chose to isolate ourselves from the West in support of causes of liberation, like black South Africa and the Palestinians.
"Since these peoples, including the Palestinians, have been reconciled with the West that Libya had confronted in support of them, Libya found itself in a strange situation. So we moved to redress this situation and reconcile."
Gaddafi tried to soften the impact of his political about-face by insisting that "Libya continues to be a leader in building peace in the world as it was the leader of liberation and the rights of people."
Although he was greeted with the customary chants of support upon his entrance and exit, observers who had witnessed past appearances said the applause was less enthusiastic than usual.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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