[Most of today's British newspapers contain accounts of Colonel Gaddafi's long speech to the UN General Assembly. None of the reports that I have seen (including the UN's own summary) indicates that he referred to Lockerbie or to Abdelbaset Megrahi. For an Arab perspective, there is a report on the English language website of Al Jazeera. The following are excerpts.]
Libya's president has attacked the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council during his first ever address to the UN General Assembly.
In a one-and-a-half hour speech in New York on Wednesday, Muammar Gaddafi said the veto-wielding nations of the Security Council were ignoring the views of the full 192 members of the General Assembly and the principles of the UN charter.
"The preamble [of the charter] says all nations are equal whether they are small or big," Gaddafi said in his address.
But he accused the permanent members of the council of undermining other states.
"The veto [held by the five permanent UN members] is against the charter, we do not accept it and we do not acknowledge it," he said.
"Veto power should be annulled."
In a speech that far exceeded the 15-minute slot he was allocated, Gaddafi read aloud sections from a paperback copy of the UN charter; at one point, he held it up and made a small tear in the cover, signalling his disdain.
"The Security Council did not provide us with security but with terror and sanctions," he said.
Gaddafi said the council, comprising the US, Britain, France, Russia and China, had failed to prevent or intervene in 65 wars that have taken place since the United Nations was established in 1945.
"How can we be happy about the world security if the world is controlled by four or five powers?" he complained. "We are just like a decor."
In his opinion, the General Assembly is the "the parliament of the world" - a 192-member body that should be dictating decisions to the Security Council. (...)
Gaddafi said adding more permanent seats would be counterproductive.
Instead, he called on regional federations and organisations, such as the Arab League, Organisation of American States, the African Union, and the Non-Aligned Movement to be given permanent seats at the Security Council.
The five permanent members should lose their veto, or the UN should expand the council with additional member states, Gaddafi said. (...)
Mohamed Ben-Madani, editor of the Maghreb Review, told Al Jazeera's that Gaddafi's speech was a "disaster" for the African Union and Arab and Muslim delegations at the General Assembly.
"I think the Libyans deserve much better than this. It is a disaster for Arab world opinion. Tearing up the UN charter is shocking, but this should have been expected from the beginning," he said.
"He said nothing about Libyan human rights and better education [for Libyans]. He said nothing about climate change or the environment."
As Gaddafi spoke, the US senate approved a [non-binding] resolution condemning the "lavish" welcome-home ceremony that Libya gave last month for Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the bombing over a US passenger aircraft over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1989.
The US senate demanded that Tripoli apologise for the celebration, which came after Scotland's justice minister released al-Megrahi, a former agent, on compassionate grounds.
Libya has a temporary seat on the Security Council until the end of 2010.
[Families of US victims of the Lockerbie disaster were amongst those at the UN headquarters in New York to protest at Gaddafi's attendance. The report on the demonstration in today's edition of The Times can be read here.]
Colonel Gaddafi's speech would have been appreciated by Noam Chomsky (signatory of the petition to the President of the General Assembly to hold an investigation into Lockerbie.)
ReplyDeleteThe Colonel did call for a number of UN investigations into various wars and the assassination of President Kennedy, Patrice Lumumba and several Palestinians. He also called for an investigation into who smuggled a bomb onto the plane of UN Secretary General Dag Hammerskold in 1952. Alas no mention of who smuggled a bomb of Bendt Carllson's plane!
I thought a lot of the speech was about Lockerbie. That is why he was banging on about the Security Council. The object of the indictment of the two Libyans on the 14th November 1992 was not a trial but the imposition of UN Sanctions upon Libya for the purpose of bringing about regime change. Changes to the Security Council that occurred on the 1st January 1992 (when Cuba and Yemen lost their seats) made this possible.
The remainder of the speech, where the Colonel tore up the UN Charter, defended the human rights of despots, called for Civil War in Iraq and argued that Libya should have several seats on the Security Council might indicate why regime change was a laudable objective.
ps.The sate of the indictment was 14/11/91 not 1992.
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