Pardon the possible spelling mistake on Gaddafi’s name. I have been reading about this meeting and I have seen 5 different spellings in numerous different publications so I’ll try to use just one.
The United States and Libya held a historic meeting today between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. Rice’s visit comes amid a surge in interest from U.S. companies, particularly in the energy sector, in doing business in Libya, where European companies have had much greater access in recent times. Gaddafi wore a white robe with a green and yellow sash patterned in outlines of the African continent as he welcomed Rice for the highest-level visit by an American official in his 39 years in power.
Credit: Nasser Nasser / Associated Press
From the Associated Press:
The mercurial Gaddhafi welcomed Rice to his compound with incense and a genteel bow. The compound in the Libyan capital of Tripoli is the same one that the United States bombed in 1986 in retaliation for what president Reagan claimed was Libya’s involvement in a terror bombing that killed two U.S. servicemen.
Rice was spending only a few hours in Tripoli on Friday, but the visit represented Gaddafi’s rehabilitation after renouncing terrorism and giving up weapons of mass destruction.
Rice said that her historic visit to former pariah state Libya proves that the U.S. never writes off another nation forever.
Rice is the highest-ranking American official to visit the North African country in more than a half-century.
“There is a long way to go but I do believe that this demonstrates that the United States doesn’t have permanent enemies,” Rice said as she flew to the capital. Rice said she had not expected she would ever go to Libya.
Rice was welcomed with a modest ceremony at the airport and was meeting with Libya’s foreign minister before the highlight of the brief visit — dinner with Qadhafi at his sprawling Tripoli compound which was once destroyed in 1986. Tipped that warplanes were flying toward Tripoli, Gadhafi and most of his family tried to flee. Gadhafi escaped injury but his 15-month-old daughter was killed, and two of his sons were injured.
From Bloomberg:
The two met in the heavily fortified complex of buildings and roads surrounded by a 15-foot-high wall, the same compound the U.S. bombed in 1986 in retaliation for a Libyan-linked attack on a Berlin nightclub in which two U.S. soldiers died.
With reporters allowed into the incense-fragranced room to witness the encounter, Gaddafi put his hand to his heart in greeting and asked how Rice was. “I’m very well, thank you,” she answered.
Gaddafi, speaking in Arabic through an interpreter, asked about the impact of Hurricane Gustav on the U.S. Gulf Coast this week. Rice recounted that, while Gustav had done less damage than feared, other tropical storms were churning toward the U.S.
They then went into a private meeting to talk about energy and counter-terrorism, among other topics. The trip “comes out of a historic decision that Libya made to give up its weapons of mass destruction and to renounce terrorism,” Rice said in Lisbon earlier today before flying into Libya. She said a Libya that is changing and “more open” would benefit the world.
Gaddafi has been the de facto leader of Libya since a 1969 coup. Although Gaddafi holds no public office or title, he is accorded the honorifics “Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” or “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution” in government statements and the official press.
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