Word: gaddafis
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...nearly a year, Fiat Chairman Gianni Agnelli has been trying to rid Europe's largest private automaker of an unwanted partner: the government of Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi. In 1976 Libya purchased a 15% share of the then troubled company for $320 million and won two seats on Fiat's 15-member board. After Fiat executed a successful turnaround to become Europe's best- selling automaker, the Tripoli government refused to part with its shares. Last week Libya, presumably strapped for cash by low oil prices, handed over its shares for a handsome $3 billion. Two of the buyers, West...
Controversy sticks as closely to Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi as the bodyguards who follow him everywhere. In the past it has stalked his political and military moves; now it is tracking him into the desert, where hydrology rather than revolutionary politics has captured his interest. In a scheme, large even by colonel's standards, Libya is gearing up to mine water from beneath the Sahara Desert and pipe it hundreds of miles to the Mediterranean littoral, where there is an increasingly serious water shortage. The program is not only hugely expensive but also controversial. Says Brian Smith...
...scheme cannot be dismissed as just a pipe dream. Last month Gaddafi opened a plant at Brega, south of Benghazi, where some of the 73-ton pipeline sections will be made. Price Bros. of Dayton, a company that is prevented by U.S. restrictions from operating in Libya, provided most of the technology to build the plant. The main contractor, the Dong-Ah Construction Co. of South Korea, is bringing in 8,000 workers to make and lay the pipes. The project seems to be unaffected by Washington's ban on U.S. exports to Libya or by President Reagan's January...
...more serious threat to the project may be the global slump in oil prices. Libya's oil revenue is expected to total $5 billion this year, down from $22.6 billion in 1980. Gaddafi is forging ahead anyway, paying his bills on time and urging Libyans to make greater and greater sacrifices. "A people that eats imported food cannot be free," he says, as store shelves become increasingly bare because of import reductions ordered to help pay for the project. Special income and sales taxes have been levied on Libyans...
...fact that Gaddafi is willing to take the risk indicates how much Libya needs water. The Libyan government calls the scheme the Great Man-Made River Project, while Gaddafi's critics have dubbed it the Great Madman River. Just who is right is as difficult to predict at this stage as the colonel's next political move...