Gaddafi complains not "rewarded" for renouncing WMD

By Stephen Brown and Philip Pullella
ROME (Reuters) - Muammar Gaddafi faced protests by students on Thursday during his first visit to former colonial power Italy, where he said the world had not rewarded Libya for giving up its ambitions to have weapons of mass destruction.
"We cannot accept living in the shadow of intercontinental missiles and nuclear weapons, which is why we decided to change route," the Libyan leader told Italian senators.
"We had hoped Libya would be an example to other countries," said Gaddafi. "But we have not been rewarded by the world."
The North African nation, once a pariah accused of sponsoring terrorism, has seen a thaw in its relations with the West since Gaddafi promised to give up the search for weapons of mass destruction. International sanctions were lifted in 2003.
Italy, which last year apologized for Italian atrocities during its 1911-1943 colonial rule, is at the forefront of the diplomatic thaw and now gets a quarter of its oil from Libya, and more recently Libyan capital injections into Italian firms.
But Gaddafi retains a defiant tone, arriving in Italy on Wednesday with a picture pinned to his uniform of Omar al-Mukhtar, a resistance hero hanged by Italian occupiers in 1931.
Italian television screens on Thursday "Lion of the Desert," a 1981 film about al-Mukhtar, banned in Italy until now.
Gaddafi, who as current chairman of the Africa Union will attend a G8 summit in Italy next month with U.S. President Barack Obama, also voiced criticism of the U.S-led war in Iraq.
"REGIMES OF ALL KINDS"
"Iraq was a fortress against terrorism, with Saddam Hussein al Qaeda could not get in, but now thanks to the United States it is an open arena and this benefits al Qaeda," said Gaddafi in his speech to the Italian senate.
He also compared the U.S. air strike on Tripoli in 1986, in which one of his daughters was killed, to an al Qaeda attack.
"What difference is there between the American attack on our homes in 1986 and bin Laden's terrorist actions?" he asked. "If bin Laden has no state and is an outlaw, America is a state with international rules."
Arguing that the world should have room for "regimes of all kinds" including "revolutionary" Libya, he asked: "What's wrong with North Korea wanting to be communist? Or Afghanistan being in the hands of the mullahs? Is not the Vatican a respectable theocratic state with embassies all over the world?"
On Wednesday, at a news conference with his host, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Gaddafi said Italy was "the only former colonial state today ... that we cannot reprimand any more" because of its decision to "clean up" its colonial past.
Berlusconi said Libya agreed to supply more oil to Italy, while the head of Libya's sovereign wealth fund said he was eyeing investments in Italian electricity and infrastructure companies and joint ventures with Italy in Libya. Continued...
Source: Reuters