Gaddafi keeps people guessing 41 years on (News Feature)

By Anne-Beatrice Clasmann Sep 3, 2010, 8:08 GMT

Tripoli - When the Libyan head of state, Muammar al-Gaddafi takes his place behind the podium anything is possible.

Either he will only say a few cheerful words - like recently at the Arab summit in Tripoli. Or, he pleasurably affronts everyone by for example tearing apart the UN-Charter or calling for a 'jihad' against Switzerland.

During the festivities for the 41st anniversary of the revolution, which put him into power on September 1, 1969 the 68-year-old 'brother leader' who is normally famous for his excessive speeches remained more or less mute this time.

Instead, on Wednesday night, he let policewomen march and sing religious chants at a sports club in Tripoli before politicians from Europe and North Africa.

Gaddafi had possibly already spent all his ammunition in Rome, where he had made waves with two proposals at the start of the week.

First he had asked Europeans to convert to Islam. Then he declared that the EU states should pay five billion euros (6.5 billion dollars) to Libya every year as compensation for his country's effort to take care of illegal African immigrants who try to reach Europe in small boats from the coast of his country.

European diplomats are faced with a problem: Gaddafi still remains a mystery to them after 41 years. They desperately try to decipher his often contradictory messages.

'Often we do not know what he just says on a whim and what he really means seriously,' says a member of the delegation of the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, which came to Tripoli for the revolution festivities.

The diplomat is wearing a Swiss watch with a photograph of Gaddafi on its face.

'The watch was given to me by a Libyan friend a few years ago,' he explains. He has also already heard the rumour that a picture of Gaddafi with the Italian head of government, Silvio Berlusconi, is said to be printed on the new Libyan passports. He cannot tell however whether there anything in the rumour.

Opinions regarding the best strategy in dealing with the erratic revolutionary leader differ in Europe. One part of Europe mainly sees Libya as a promising export market with great oil reserves. The other part prefers cautiousness.

Gaddafi is no longer considered a supporter of international terrorism, but if he disapproves of something he uses every means at his disposal to show his displeasure.

This also became clear during the most recent conflict with Switzerland, which broke out when Gaddafi's son Hannibal was temporarily arrested in Geneva. As a consequence Swiss and EU citizens were no longer able to gain visas for Libya this summer.

Hardly anyone in Tripolis believes that Gaddafi's son, Saif al- Islam, will be positioned as his successor during the 'brother leader's' lifetime.

'It is the role of Saif al-Islam to entertain the Libyan youth and to convey the image of a modern Libya to the Europeans - not more and not less,.' a European diplomat thinks.

It is certain that at the anniversary celebrations of 'his' revolution Gaddafi was alone among the guests - without his sons and also without the Libyan Lockerbie-assassin, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al- Megrahi, who was released from a Scottish prison last year and sent back to his home country.

Al-Megrahi had been given a life sentence for his participation in the 1988 bomb attack of a US airplane above the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 259 on the plane and 11 people in the town. Today he lives a secluded life in his family's house in Tripoli.

For Britain the 'long life' of the Libyan assassin is an embarrassment. Al-Megrahi had been released because he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and the medical prognosis had been that he only had a few weeks left to live. He supposedly returned home to die.

But nobody contests the fact that his premature release was very useful for the British energy company, BP, which gained a concession for oil drilling off of the Libyan coast.