Word: libya
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...auditorium of Tripoli's Corinthia Hotel, a number of Libyan officials sit onstage in dark suits and ties, addressing scores of Western executives in flawless English about the country's new business opportunities. A few feet away is a huge portrait of the most famous face in Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, in his trademark African robe and sunglasses, fist in the air, a defiant look on his face, as if to say to the roomful of businessmen, I still run things around here. But the businessmen don't seem to notice. Instead they are transfixed by a tall young man with...
...speaker should know. He is Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, the second son of Libya's leader. Seif says he spent most of last year coaxing his father into transforming his 35-year-old revolution, which Gaddafi has led since he waged a military coup in 1969. The aging revolutionary has ruled over a centralized socialist system, repressing dissent and supporting armed attacks against American targets. Seif, 32, is believed by many analysts and diplomats to be Gaddafi's probable political heir. He is a doctoral student at the London School of Economics, a skilled artist and a keen tennis player...
Whether Seif is Libya's future and his father its past is still unclear. But Gaddafi agreed to curtail Libya's nuclear-weapons program as well as pay damages to the families of those killed in the 1988 Pan Am airline bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the non-American survivors of the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin discothèque. As a result, President Bush announced he would begin lifting economic sanctions against Libya. The European Union recently followed. "It was the right decision," says Seif of his father's new Western-friendly stance, "the right initiative...
...thought I was referring to America, try looking at Sudan. Or China. Or Cuba. Or Burma, Haiti, Libya, Uganda, Congo, Vietnam, Liberia, Pakistan, Syria, Laos, Rwanda, and North Korea. As of 2002, these countries all ranked below zero in their polity scores, which measure the degree of democracy minus autocracy...
...like Liberia and Sudan has been lackluster and glacially slow. The proliferation of nuclear technology could enable a terrorist network like al Qaeda to develop a bomb, yet the administration failed to sanction Pakistan for pardoning Abdul Qader Khan, the scientist who confessed to selling nuclear weapons technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea...