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Hugo Chavez has become a parody of a tin horn Latin American dictator, strutting about trying to prove to his gang of buddies what a bad-ass he is. Last month Chavez hosted a group of 30 leftist leaders from African and Latin states at the Hilton Resort on Isla Margarita, a luxury resort. Among them über baddies Moamer Kadhafi of Libya (who pitched his trademark tent on the beach) and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.  Too bad Kim Jong-il couldn't make it. I am sure Chavez offered the utmost in hospitality, as he spoke with his peers. He was out to...

Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi told CNN he had met with some of the families of those who died in the 1988 bombing of a US jet over Lockerbie to offer his condolences. "Yes, I met some of them yesterday. It was a friendly meeting," the Libyan leader told CNN in excerpts of the interview released Friday. Kadhafi is making his first visit to the United Nations in New York. "I offered my condolences for the families who lost them. They also expressed their condolences for my daughter who was killed for the American raid in 1986," he said, speaking through...

Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi marked the 40th anniversary of the bloodless coup that brought him to power, with celebrations attended by African, Arab and Latin American leaders but largely ignored by the West. At the end of a two-hour show late Tuesday retracing the 40 years since Kadhafi ousted King Idriss in 1969, a brief video clip showed the return to Libya last month of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, but the western delegations present did not react. Kadhafi's party kicked off around midnight on Monday at the former US military base of Matega near Tripoli with a two-hour...

TRIPOLI (AFP) – Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi blasted Israel at a special African Union summit on Monday on the eve of celebrations to mark his 40-year rule, accusing the Jewish state of causing all the woes facing Africa. Israel is "behind all of Africa's conflicts," Kadhafi told some 30 African leaders gathered under a huge tent at Tripoli airport for a summit focused on solving the continent's trouble spots, including Sudan's Darfur and Somalia. However the one-day meeting ended without proposing concrete steps to do so, the leaders merely adopting a "Tripoli Declaration" and a plan of action "to find...

Italy agreed to pay Libya $5 billion as compensation for its 30-year occupation of the country during the 20th century. The money will be invested by Italy over a 25-year period. For VOA, Sabina Castelfranco reports from Rome. The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday signed a "friendship pact" with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Under the pact, Italy agreed to compensate Libya for abuses it committed during its colonial rule of the North African country. Italy will invest $5 billion in Libya in a deal that effectively turns the page on colonial-era disputes that have long...

Lebanon has issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi over the disappearance 30 years ago of a senior Shiite cleric after a visit to Libya, officials said on Wednesday. Kadhafi was also indicted for allegedly "inciting the abduction" of Imam Mussa Sadr, the spiritual guide of Lebanon's Shiite community, investigating magistrate Samih el-Hajj said in a charge sheet. An "arrest warrant" was issued for the Libyan ruler and six other Libyan suspects who were also indicted for taking part in the alleged abduction, AFP reported. Sadr disappeared while in Libya with two companions Mohammed Yacoub and Abbas Badreddin...

Excerpt - Libya has taken "worryingly retaliatory measures" against Switzerland following the recent arrest of leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's son in Geneva, according to the Swiss Foreign Ministry. Col Gaddafi's government has recalled some of its diplomats from Switzerland, reduced flights between the countries, stopped processing visa requests from Swiss citizens, demanded the closure of Swiss firms in Libya and detained two Swiss citizens. Swiss foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has formally complained about the moves to her Libyan counterpart and has advised citizens not to travel to Libya. ~ snip ~

(AGI) - Geneva, 17 July - The detention of Hannibal Gheddafi, son of the Libyan President, and his wife lasted just one night. The Gheddafis, arrested yesterday evening accused of mistreating two staff of the hotel in Geneva where they were staying, were released after the payment of bail of 309,000 euro. The most serious charges were made against Colonel Gheddafi's daughter-in-law, 9 months' pregnant and admitted today to the University of Geneva hospital. The two employees of the Hotel Presidente Wilson, a Moroccan man and a Tunisian woman showed the injuries to the judge but the Gheddafis' lawyers...

Excerpt - TRIPOLI, Libya -- Recently, Libyan strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi wrote a letter to President Bush, asking: Where are we going with our relationship? Five years ago, the Bush administration helped persuade Libya -- for decades one of the world's leading sponsors of terrorism -- to scrap its nuclear ambitions and dismantle its terror infrastructure. It ranks as one of the president's signature foreign-policy successes and was supposed to blaze a path for other rogue states, principally North Korea and Iran. Now, these ties are fraying. According to Libyan diplomats who have seen the letter, sent in early March,...

TRIPOLI (AFP) - The Kadhafi Foundation denied a report by Human Rights Watch that it was holding a Libyan political prisoner whose health was deteriorating on Monday, as AFP was allowed to visit the detainee. HRW called at the end of January for the immediate and unconditional release of opposition figure Fathi al-Jahmi, 66, who has been held since 2004 after criticising the regime of Libya's leader Moamer Kadhafi. It said he was seriously ill and needed urgent medical treatment. But Salah Abdessalem of the Foundation, a charity headed by Kadhafi's son Seif al-Islam, said he was "suprised" by the...

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi warned on Tuesday that he would turn his back on Africa if the continent's leaders again reject his proposals for closer unity at a summit in Addis Ababa later this week. "If unity is not achieved, then Libya will turn its back on Africa and reorient its foreign policy in other directions -- Euro-Mediterrannean or Arabo-Mediterranean," he told a news conference on the eve of his departure for Thursday's African Union summit. Kadhafi said Libya was also prepared to move its investments in African countries, which he said totalled more than five billion...

MADRID (AFP) - Mystery and confusion surrounded a private trip Moamer Kadhafi is making to Spain's southern Andalucia region this weekend, ahead of an official visit to Madrid. A Spanish diplomatic source said early this week that the Libyan leader will use his two days to visit Cordoba and Grenada, which were centres of power during the centuries of Moorish Muslim domination from 711 et 1492. But "unless there was a change at the last minute," Cordoba and Grenada were dropped from the agenda for logistical reasons, the Spanish foreign ministry said, which suggested he may go to Malaga instead....

Excerpt - Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi arrives in Paris Monday for a high-profile visit set to usher in multi-billion-euro nuclear and aviation contracts, even as critics lashed President Nicolas Sarkozy for welcoming the former pariah. Staying in a heated Bedouin tent pitched near the Elysee presidential palace, Kadhafi is expected during the five-day visit to approve the purchase of three billion euros (4.4 billion dollars) of Airbus planes, a nuclear reactor and possibly Rafale fighter jets. ~ snip ~

ACCRA (AFP) - The drive towards forging a United States of Africa was running out of steam Wednesday as leaders filed away from a summit without agreeing on a timeline for creating a new government for the continent. The three-day summit in Ghana, which wrapped up shortly before midnight on Tuesday, was devoted to a grand debate on a union government with burning issues such as Darfur and Somalia barely getting a look in. But when host President John Kufuor delivered a closing declaration, it was clear that leaders who favour a gradual approach towards integration had stymied the fast-track...

Jerusalem, 14 May (AKI) - The Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was taken to hospital on Sunday after suffering a stroke, according to a report on the Palestinian news agency Maan, quoted by Israeli news site Ynet. The condition of the 65-year old leader is reported to be serious and family members have been arriving at the hospital, the report said.

TOKYO - Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi told a visiting Japanese official that his country has urged North Korea to give up efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, the Foreign Ministry said Friday. Iwao Matsuda, Japan's state minister for science and technology policy, held talks with Gadhafi in Sebha, about 375 miles south of Tripoli, on Wednesday, the ministry said in a statement issued Friday. Gadhafi surprised the world in late 2003 when he swore off terrorism and announced plans to dismantle his country's weapons of mass destruction programs. Libya was eager to end his international isolation and economic hardships...

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libya was on the verge of building a nuclear bomb before it decided in 2003 to abandon its programme to produce weapons of mass destruction, its leader Moamer Kadhafi has said, according to the country's official news agency. "Libya was on the point of building a nuclear bomb: that is no longer a secret," Kadhafi was quoted on Monday as telling a group of engineers. "The Americans and the International Atomic Energy Agency were well aware." In a dramatic move that has seen his former pariah state returned to the international fold, Kadhafi announced in December 2003...

April 15, 2006 -- The American pop star Lionel Richie and the Spanish opera singer Jose Carreras have performed in a concert in Tripoli to mark the 20th anniversary of the U.S. bombing raid on Libya. About 40 people, including an adopted daughter of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, were killed in the raids on Tripoli and Benghazi in the early hours of April 15, 2006. Then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan said the air strikes were launched in retaliation for Libyan complicity in the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque that killed an American soldier.

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libya is to return properties confiscated in the mid-1970s and pay compensation to their former owners, under a cabinet decree, a Kadhafi Foundation official told AFP. The source said that the decree which rolls back socialist practices of three decades ago would come into effect within days and would be assessed on current values. The Kadhafi Foundation is headed by Seif al-Islam, son of Libyan leader Colonel Moamer Kadhafi, and has been at the forefront of efforts since last August to have the victims compensated. At Kadhafi's initiative, the government confiscated goods, property, land and businesses in...

LIBYAN leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi called French President Jacques Chirac overnight to express his concern about rioting in Paris suburbs and other parts of France. The Libyan national news agency reported that Mr Chirac thanked Colonel Gaddafi for his interest and reassured him that the situation was under control. Colonel Gaddafi was reported saying Libya was "disposed to help France overcome these events," which he described as "regrettable." The report did not outline what kind of aid might have been forthcoming. French authorities have stepped up police action against youths responsible for more than a week of urban riots, in...

Here are some excerpts from a report by the official news agency in Libya on Muammar al-Qathafi's statements: The Leader underscored the need to launch full freedom in Libya, the Jamahiri state " the state of men and women, a country which is all civilian society and is self- run." He called for lifting all restrictions that stand in the face of this, so that Libyans be fully free in selecting economic activities, including founding companies on partnership bases, or on the bases of wages " work with fees". The leader also underscored the freedom of faith, worship, and religion,...

LONDON, England (AP) - Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was quoted as saying yesterday that the United Nations must scrap the Security Council and give its powers to the General Assembly, if it ever hopes to become a truly democratic organisation. In a full-page advertisement in The Guardian newspaper, Gadhafi called the UN Security Council "an ugly, forceful, and horrible instrument of dictatorship - an executioner's whip with no appeal against its judgment, even if its judgment is unfair, biased and harmful." The Security Council's five permanent members - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China - have veto...

The parquet floor of Paris engages of the continuations against the son of Kadhafi The parquet floor of Paris will engage of the continuations against Hannibal Kadhafi, the son of president Libyen, for violences which he would have exerted on his partner at the time of a stay at the beginning of February in Paris, one learned Monday from legal source. Hannibal Kadhafi will be continued for "voluntary violence on anybody vulnerable, in the event his/her concubine pregnant, having involved a total disablement of work (ITT) of less than 8 days", one specified of the same source. Justice also...

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son Hannibal Gaddafi, who was allegedly embroiled recently in scuffles in France, has also been accused of a violent incident in Denmark. "We have been informed by the police of this case of violence. But no complaint has been lodged with the police," the head of protocol at the Danish foreign ministry, ambassador Christopher Bo Bramsen, said. "We are following the matter," he said, adding that Hannibal Gaddafi held a diplomatic passport and therefore enjoyed diplomatic immunity. According to the tabloid Ekstra Bladet, Danish police were called three weeks ago to a violent incident involving...

Kadhafi son accused of beating woman AFP: 2/3/2005 PARIS, Feb 3 (AFP) - French police were Thursday investigating claims that a son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi beat a woman in a Paris hotel earlier in the week. The Libyan embassy was asked to step in after scuffles in two separate luxury hotels, during which Hannibal Kadhafi allegedly produced a nine-millimetre handgun. After the first incident a woman was treated for bruises in hospital and later filed suit claiming to have been beaten by Kadhafi. Kadhafi, who is in his late 20s, left Paris for Copenhagen on Wednesday after being...

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's politically influential son said on Thursday that armed resistance to U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq was legitimate but condemned the killing of innocent hostages. Seif al-Islam Gaddafi said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had called the war in Iraq illegal, key members of the Security Council had opposed it and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction -- the main reason Washington gave for invading Iraq -- removed any moral justification for military action. "The result is clear -- that it's an illegal occupation and therefore people should resist it," Gaddafi...

Polish PM seeking to revive his country’s once lucrative economic ties with Libya. TRIPOLI - Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi hailed a fresh start in relations with Warsaw Wednesday after talks with Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka, who is seeking to revive their once lucrative economic ties. Kadhafi told reporters after meeting Belka in a Bedouin tent adjacent to his Bab Al-Aziziya palace in the Libyan capital that there were now "great prospects to re-establish cooperation with Poland". "In the past, we cooperated very closely and now we will resume this cooperation and can work together not only on the bilateral...

Turkey will be an Islamic "Trojan horse" inside the European Union if it is allowed to join the bloc, to the advantage of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi warned in comments published Thursday during interview with Italian radio. "The Islamic world, including Islamic extremists up to bin Laden, is rejoicing at Turkey's entry. It is their Trojan horse," Kadhafi was quoted as saying in the RAI interview. Kadhafi said he was not against Ankara's EU entry but warned of its possible consequences. "I say only that there will be consequences from the entry of this Trojan...

TRIPOLI (AFP) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi clashed over Iraq during their first-ever meeting in Tripoli while German business leaders touted for business in the oil-rich former pariah state. In the latest visit by a Western leader since Libya returned to the international fold last year, Schroeder held two hours of talks with Kadhafi in a traditional Bedouin tent after arriving late Thursday. The two leaders disagreed over Iraq, with Kadhafi blaming the United States for the continuing violence there and called for US troops to withdraw, while Schroeder expressed doubts over the wisdom of...

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 29 (AFP) - Libya on Wednesday offered some colourful ideas for reforming the United Nations, including moving the General Assembly to Geneva and letting Bill Clinton resolve the world's conflicts and wars. Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, never shy about putting forward visionary proposals, also wants his nation to have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalghem said. "The past 59 years have proven that the General Assembly is merely a decorative body without a soul," Shalghem said as Libya took the podium at the annual United Nations debate of...

BERLIN (AP) -- Libya agreed Tuesday to pay $35 million in compensation for victims of a 1986 bombing in Berlin that killed two U.S. servicemen and a Turkish woman and injured 229 others, the Libyan ambassador to Germany said. The deal applies to Germans who were wounded in the April 5, 1986 attack on the LaBelle disco and the family of the slain Turkish woman, but not the families of two Americans, Ambassador Said Abdulaati told The Associated Press. It is the latest step in an effort by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to end his country's pariah status, following...

LONDON (Reuters) - Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi could buy promoted premier league soccer club Crystal Palace, The Guardian says. It said Gaddafi, who owns a 7.5 percent stake in Italian club Juventus, has not made an offer yet but has shown interest in the small south London club that surprisingly won the promotion playoffs in May. "I've been told that Gaddafi and his son (Al-Saadi) are interested in acquiring Palace," the Guardian quoted the club's chairman Simon Jordan as saying. Jordan said there had been no formal approach but if there was "I'd consider it ... If it's...

Col. Qadhafi goes 'ballistic' over name (Humor Gazette) By John Breneman (10/04/02) http://www.humorgazette.com/section_terror1.htm Libyan crazy man Moammar Gadhafi has informed the United Nations that he is "sick and tired of having my name spelled 10 different ways." Col. Gadhaffi, whose name is routinely spelled Kadhafi, Gadhdhafi, Qadhafi, Khaddafi and countless other variations in press reports, said he believes the spelling fiasco is part of a western conspiracy to irritate him into "firing off a bunch of nuclear bombs and maybe a little mustard gas." Qadhafi, whose first name is also spelled Muammar, Mu'ammar or Mohammar, is reportedly "going ballistic" over...

"So much is possible" for N. Korea in return for nuclear dismantlement: Rice (pushing for Libya-style settlement) foreign,frontpage,news Nkorea,kim jongil,nuke,kadhafi,skorea,rice,bush,libya AFP via Yahoo! News http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040709/pl_afp/skorea_us_040709141650 "So much is possible" for NKorea in return for nuclear dismantlement: Rice SEOUL (AFP) - US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said North Korea (news - web sites) would be surprised at "how much will be possible" if the Stalinist state abandons its nuclear ambitions, South Korean officials said. The remarks came when Rice met with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon in Seoul on the final leg of her Asian...

/begin my translation Kadhafi Urged N. Korea to Abandon Nukes It is learned that Libyan leader Kadahfi, who gave up (Libyan) WMD's in late last year, is trying to dissuade N. Korea from having nukes, Japanese press reported. In a Japanese-Libyan meeting on arms reduction and non-prolifereation held on June 30 by high-level foreign ministry officials from both countries, the Libyan officials disclosed the efforts, according to Japanese press reports. During the meeting, When Japanese told Liyan counterparts, "We hope that Libya would persuade N. Korea to give up nuclear weapons," Liyans responded, "Our leader Kadhafi has been already working...

Jana/1 The Leader of the Revolution/ statement Tripoli/ 5 Assaif/ Jana The Leader of the Revolution made a statement tonight to Jana news agency in which he said: "I express my profound regrets over Reagan's death before he appears before justice to held to account for his ugly crime in 1986 against Libyan children. / Jamahiriya News Agency/

PARIS (AFP) - Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi said he "absolutely does not regret the past", despite his country's former alleged support for terrorism. "We were in a phase of fighting for emancipation, liberation.... We were accused of being terrorists, but that is the price we had to pay. If that is terrorism, then we are proud to be terrorists because we helped the liberation of the (African) continent", Kadhafi told public Radio France Internationale. "I absolutely do not regret the past", he said in comments recorded in Brussels. The Libyan leader was speaking on the second and final day...

TRIPOLI, Libya - U.S. congressmen flew into Tripoli on Sunday aboard a U.S. Navy plane they said was the first plane flying an American flag to land in Tripoli since Col. Moammar Gadhafi took power in 1969. "I'm here to reinforce the positive steps that have been taken by the leader of Libya," Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., said. Led by Weldon, the bipartisan delegation arrived as U.S. and British experts were preparing to start dismantling Libya's weapons programs with Gadhafi's blessing. Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., arrived in Tripoli earlier Saturday, but he wasn't on a U.S. military plane. The...

Excerpt - The United States is preparing to dispatch up to a dozen diplomats and intelligence officers to Libya to establish a U.S. mission that will help oversee the dismantling of the North African nation's programs for weapons of mass destruction, U.S. officials said yesterday. The move would create the first U.S. diplomatic presence in Libya since May 1980, when a dozen American staff members closed the embassy and slipped out shortly before the building was sacked and burned. Several months before, angry mobs attacked the American mission in sympathy with the Iranian takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran...

The foreign minister's political adviser Ron Prossor reportedly met in Paris with a representative of Libya's Gaddafi regime. The meeting was brokered by the government of Katar, reports a Kuwait newspaper. Sides reportedly scheduled an Israeli mission to Tripoli late January to discuss diplomatic relations The paper also reports that Israeli and Libyan senior officials met in Vienna last Friday at the US embassy there. Ministerial sources claim that this is no more than a small step on a very long road, and stressed that without concrete actions on the part of Libya, there will be no advance beyond...

The crisis between the United States and Libya that led to the declaration of a national emergency on January 7, 1986, has not been fully resolved, although there have been some positive developments. On September 12, 2003, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1506 (UNSCR 1506), ending the United Nations sanctions against Libya. These U.N. sanctions were imposed in 1992 and 1993 as a result of Libyan involvement in the terrorist bombings of Pan Am 103 in 1988 and UTA 772 in 1989, and included travel restrictions, an arms embargo, and financial sanctions. The UNSCR 1506 lifted these...

WASHINGTON (UPI) -- It was surprise enough that one formerly revolutionary leader should have decided that President George W. Bush and Britain's Tony Blair were right, and that it was time to abandon dreams of acquiring weapons of mass destruction as an equalizer against Western power influence. It was stunning that the first convert should have been Libya's Muammar Qadaffi, who since the 1968 coup, remained an enigma to most outside observers. His official biography is remarkably devoid of details about his early years -- but it always begins with "born in a desert tent near Surt." I've always...

The United States has urged North Korea, Syria and Iran to "get smart" and follow Libya's example in pledging to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programs and join the rest of the world in productive cooperation. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tripoli's decision had put the United States and its allies "on a bit of a roll," and states still pursuing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons would be better off if they followed suit. "We hope that the North Koreans are watching all of this, and realizing that others are getting smart, and it's time for them to...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - During secret visits to Libya, US intelligence officials found a more advanced uranium enrichment program than publicly disclosed but no evidence of actual production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, officials said Saturday. They were given extraordinary access during two-week-long visits in October and December with the help and encouragement of Libyan leader Colonel Moammar Khadafy who met personally with them, senior intelligence officials said. The secret dealings culminated Friday with the stunning annoucement in London and Washington and Tripoli that Libya has agreed to fully disclose and dismantle its programs to build unconventional weapons under...

Libyan leader Moamar Kadhafi, once a devoted and energetic champion of Arab unity, announced this weekend his definitive separation from the Arabs, whom he heavily criticized. Standing before a group of women, in a Mediterranean villa in Syrte about 500 kilometers (300 miles) east of Tripoli, Kadhafi declared himself more than ever African, claiming to be "forever beyond nationalism and Arab unity." Admittedly, Colonel Kadhafi is famous for his verbal excesses and spectacular rebuttals, but his declaration Saturday sounded like an irreconcilable divorce from the Arabs, coming from the mouth of an aging Kadhafi who in recent years has never...

The AIDS is a "peaceful virus", affirms Kadhafi VIH/sida is a "peaceful virus", affirmed Saturday the Libyan leader Mouammar Kadhafi with his counterparts joined together for the top closure of the African Union (UA) with Maputo. "AIDS, AIDS, AIDS. We do not understand anything other. It is terrorism. It is a psychological warfare. The AIDS is a peaceful virus. If you remain clean, it there does not have a problem ", declared Mr. Kadhafi, during a speech impromptu 45 minutes, supposed to be short and agreed short speech of thanks for the end of the top. The AIDS and...

TRIPOLI, March 1 (AFP) - Thousands of protestors gathered near the Saudi embassy here Saturday to protest a live TV spat between Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi at an Arab summit in Egypt. Several demonstrators were injured in clashes with riot police who prevented the crowd from approaching the embassy compound in the Libyan capital, an AFP correspondent witnessed. The state JANA news agency also accused Gulf countries of being behind US-led plans to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Television viewers across the Arab world were able to see Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi...

In a bid to protect its financing, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) has denied Libya a seat on its committee. Accused of supporting terrorism, the nation has been refused by NEPAD due to concern over alienating potential western investors, reported Reuters. NEPAD has agreed to practice democracy and good governance across the continent in return for billions of dollars of private Western financing. It has full support from the G8 group of industrial nations. Libya recently strengthened its campaign to join the group, whose members include Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal and Algeria. However, African diplomats fear that Libyan...

Libya's leader Kadhafi claims he is telling Islamic separatists from the Philippines to Chechnya to give up the struggle and integrate with their neighbors. This new message of respectability is being carried by his most trusted ambassador, his son Seif al-Islam al-Kadhafi. According to Kadhafi, Chechens, for instance, will be better off being part of a powerful Russia than forming a separate Caucasian state. "We told them, 'We want Muslims to be in the Russian government'." Seif al-Islam told a meeting at London's Royal Institute for International Affairs that Muslims should learn from Jews. "Jews in America do not ask...