Word: gaddafi
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...that Gaddafi has not tried. "Show me one country which is stricken by the terror disease, and I will show you the Libyan connection," says Yehudit Ronen, a scholar of Libyan affairs from the Tel Aviv-based Shiloah Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. "Gaddafi has his arm everywhere." Revolutionary movements backed by Gaddafi have ranged from the Palestine Liberation 0rganization to the Irish Republican Army, from Basque and Corsican separatists to the Moro National Liberation Front in the Philippines. He runs a dozen or more training camps for guerrilla warfare, with advisers supplied by East Germany and Cuba...
...Perhaps Gaddafi's most brazen use of force was his invasion of neighboring Chad in November 1980 in support of President Goukouni Oueddei. Barely a month later, Gaddafi declared a merger of the two countries and kept up to 10,000 Libyan troops in Chad as a virtual occupation force. Then, just as abruptly, Gaddafi removed his troops last November after the Organization of African Unity asked him to do so. But he may not stay out: much of Chad is marked on Gaddafi's own maps as part of a greater Libya that also includes sections of Niger...
...determined to prove his own importance, Gaddafi has suffered numerous rebuffs. They must sting. Gaddafi has attempted to work out ambitious mergers of Libya with Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. His present link with Syria is largely symbolic and may well collapse, as the others did, in recrimination. In 1973 Gaddafi ordered an Egyptian submarine, temporarily under his command in Libyan waters, to torpedo the Queen Elizabeth II, which was carrying hundreds of Jews from Southampton to Haifa to celebrate Israel's 25th anniversary. Sadat, who was then still on speaking terms with Gaddafi, countermanded the order. Over the past decade...
...Gaddafi preaches democracy; he practices dictatorship. In April 1980, he ordered all Libyan dissidents living abroad to return home or face "liquidation." By the end of that year, at least twelve Libyans had been hunted down and murdered in England, Italy, West Germany, Greece and Lebanon by Gaddafi-anointed hit squads. Most of the victims were little-known private citizens, and it is doubtful that they posed a threat to Tripoli. Instead, their killings were presumably intended to set an example. So Byzantine are Gaddafi's methods that when Libyan Hitman Abdel Nabih Swaiti, who was tried and convicted...
...greatest concern to the U.S. and its allies has been Gaddafi's links with the Soviets. Over the past ten years, Gaddafi has purchased $12 billion worth of Soviet tanks, aircraft, artillery and other military hardware. Some 2,000 Soviet military advisers are now stationed in Libya. In an interview last week with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Gaddafi called the Soviet Union a "friend" and the U.S. a "devil." Said he: "America does not have friends, but only slaves. We refuse to accept slavery and are therefore considered enemies." Yet most analysts feel that Gaddafi...