Word: gaddafi
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From the burning of the U.S. embassy in Tripoli in 1979 to his outspoken support for the murderous attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports last December, Muammar Gaddafi has left a trail of blood and destruction during the past decade. Acting Ambassador-at-Large Robert Oakley told Congress in February that while Syria and Iran "remain very much involved" in fomenting international terrorism, "over the past six months Libya has become by far the most active, especially against American and European travelers. If it cannot be stopped, others can be expected to follow...
Name a terrorist group, says the State Department, and Libya has probably provided financial assistance, at least. Gaddafi has backed not just radical Palestinian organizations but outfits as distant as Colombia's M-19 guerrillas, which engineered the bloody takeover of Bogota's Palace of Justice last November; the Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front on the French Pacific-island territory of New Caledonia; and anti-Turkish Armenian terrorist groups. Last month, when Gaddafi played host to the ambitiously titled Congress of the World Center for Struggle Against Imperialism and Zionism, his guests included representatives of the Irish Republican Army...
...Gaddafi's most worrisome ally is the shadowy Palestinian radical Abu Nidal, who is reported to be living in Libya. The U.S. has accused him of carrying out the Rome and Vienna airport assaults, using passports provided by Libya. It also holds Abu Nidal responsible for hijacking an EgyptAir passenger jet to Malta last November, an act that ended in disaster when 60 people were killed as Egyptian commandos stormed the plane in a rescue raid. Much of Gaddafi's mischief has been aimed at his political foes. Since 1980, more than 15 anti-Gaddafi Libyan exiles have been assassinated...
Despite that firepower, Libya is far from unprotected. Its air force includes some 480 Soviet and aging French-built aircraft. More ominously, a Kresta-class Soviet cruiser is anchored in Libyan waters. Seven other Soviet warships are nearby in the Mediterranean. If Gaddafi should rise to the bait and try forcibly to counter any U.S. movement across his line in the gulf, a prime U.S. retaliatory target might be the SA-5 antiaircraft sites that recently became operational at an airfield south of the Libyan city of Surt. One complication in hitting the sites: an attack could result in casualties...
While testing Gaddafi's responses, the U.S. also tested Soviet defenses by sending the cruiser Yorktown and the destroyer Caron into the Black Sea, where $ they sailed within six miles of the Crimean peninsula near the port of Sevastopol...