Surprise, surprise

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Gaddafi

LIBYAN leader Muammar Gaddafi has abandoned his once favoured title, Colonel Gaddafi. "Do not call me colonel anymore. I am not colonel. I refuse to be a colonel. The Arab military is such a shame I do not want to be associated with it at all," he told reporters in Tunis earlier this week.

Gaddafi does not want to be called the Libyan leader either. "The Libyan people have no leader. They lead themselves. I am just the leader of the people's revolution," he explained to eager reporters who left the Arab summit press centre and followed him to a press conference held at the Libyan ambassador's residence in Tunis.

The "leader of the Libyan revolution" held a press conference hours after he walked out of the opening session of the Arab summit on Saturday. It seems Gaddafi was not planning to participate in the Arab summit in the first place.

Two days before the convocation of the summit, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalgam voiced scepticism over the Tunis summit in view of too many inter-Arab differences. It was only an hour before the official opening of the Arab summit that Gaddafi's participation was secured.

However, as Gaddafi was posing with the host of the summit, Tunisian President Zein Al-Abidine Bin Ali, for the press picture at the doorstep of the conference hall, members of the Libyan delegation were spreading the word among the press corps that their leader would be walking out on the conference "in about 15 minutes to give a press conference".

Indeed, 12 minutes later, Gaddafi walked out just as Arab League Secretary- General Amr Moussa was warning Arab leaders that their pan- Arab organisation -- and for that matter, the Arab world -- faces unprecedented challenges that can only be tackled with serious resolve and profound solidarity.

Gaddafi left behind the Libyan delegation to participate in what remained of the opening session and then held his press conference to declare that Libya would boycott the rest of the summit to protest an agenda that does not reflect the pressing needs of the Arab peoples and fails to accommodate the Libyan perspective on Arab affairs.

"What can the Arab summit do anyway? It is a worthless summit," Gaddafi said. He argued that Arab leaders are doing nothing for the Palestinian people who are suffering under Israeli occupation, for the Iraqi people who are faced with devastation, for Syria that is subject to unfair sanctions, or even for any Arab leader who might be confronted with foreign threats.

"What is the point of an Arab summit that convenes when it cannot do anything to help two Arab presidents that are in jail, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein?" he challenged. Gaddafi conceded that he only came to please the Tunisian host, a good friend of his, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Algerian President Abdul-Aziz Boutaflika who stressed the need for his participation.

Out of the meeting room, Gaddafi offered his input to the summit, which he said "the dishonest secretariat of the Arab League" failed to pay heed to.

On Palestine, Gaddafi reiterated his call for a one-state solution. "Israetine" is the way ahead, he said. He argued that there has to be one democratic state on the [entire historic land of] Palestine, for Palestinians and Israelis together. On Iraq, Gaddafi called for an immediate pullout of all occupation forces and for them to be replaced by United Nations' blue helmets and joint Arab forces. On inter-Arab relations, he called for the establishment of an Arab union and the re-establishment of an Arab defence pact.

Until this happens, Gaddafi insisted that he would continue to disassociate himself from the Arab world and the entire Middle East. "Libya is currently absorbed in its African space and it is planning to be the bridge between Africa and Europe," he said.

Once an advocate of close Arab relations, Gaddafi has been for the past few years demonstrating impatience and disappointment with Arab states for failing to show sufficient solidarity with Libya during its political confrontation with the West over its alleged involvement in the bombing of the Pan-Am flight over Lockerbie in 1988. He was particularly angered with his Arab neighbours when they failed to emulate the African nations that took a unilateral decision to breach the sanctions imposed on Libya in the late 1990s. Since then, Gaddafi has been threatening to pull Libya out of the Arab League altogether.