Word: gaddafis
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Ever since Monday's announcement that it was restoring full diplomatic relations with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the Bush Administration has suggested that the onetime international pariah's decision to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction program was primarily the result of the U.S. war on terror and its toppling of Saddam Hussein. But for a brief moment in December 2003, the actual capture of the Iraqi leader almost delayed the first public sign of the historic rapprochement between Libya and the West...
...Gaddafi's son Seif al Islam and government officials had spent months in secret negotiations with representatives of both the CIA and the British secret intelligence service MI6, working out the parameters of a deal in which Libya would give up its nuclear ambitions. But on Dec. 14, only a few days before an official announcement was to be made in Washington, Hussein was pulled out of a spider hole and Gaddafi had last-minute jitters. Worried that the humiliating capture of Saddam would be viewed as the driving force behind his voluntary disarmament, Gaddafi suddenly proposed a postponement. According...
...Blair's tone may have been affectionate and familiar, but the drawn-out process that led to Muammar Gaddafi coming in from the cold wasn't always so warm. At one point, Seif al Islam recalls, his father "suspected an ambush" by the West: getting him to give up his only deterrent but withholding diplomatic rehabilitation. A series of TIME interviews that began before Sept. 11 with Gaddafi himself, his influential son and key Libyan officials offer a unique look into the Libyan view of the secret talks and considerations that led to Gaddafi?s staggering reversal of fortune...
...early as February of 2001, Gaddafi told TIME that he was dramatically shifting Libya's strategic orientation, seeking normal relations with the West and an alignment with Africa rather than the Middle East. "I supported all liberation movements fighting imperialism," he said in February 2001, "but I believe that is over now." In a TIME interview in January 2005, he went further: "There is never permanent animosity or permanent friendship. We all made mistakes, both sides. The most important thing is to rectify the mistakes...
...While Gaddafi indicates that geopolitical shifts like the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Palestinian decision to negotiate with Israel and the increasing spread of Islamic extremism forced him to change course, he believes that it was his atomic bomb program that enabled him to deal with the West from a position of strength. Even today, he concedes nothing in Libya's support for terrorism, bragging about how revolutionaries he aided like Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat became welcome visitors to the White House. Libya's regret, he says, is that some of the groups committed the error of killing...