Qaddafi on tour

last updated 8 January 2015

Brussels

Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi this week made his first trip to Europe in 15 years, hoping to shed his nation’s rogue status. On his last trip, to a Belgrade summit, Qaddafi delivered a harangue against Jews. This time he visited Brussels to ask the European Union to normalize relations with Libya. A week earlier, the U.S. lifted most of its economic sanctions when Tripoli promised to abandon its nuclear weapons program and make payments to families of people killed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Qaddafi declared that Libya had “decided to lead the peace movement all over the world,” and called on the U.S. to discard its own weapons of mass destruction.