Word: libyans
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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...
...personal diplomacy worked, and an announcement was made on December 19 that Gaddafi had agreed to dismantle his weapons. Ten months later, after Western agents had worked to remove all the components of Libya's WMD program and dismantle its long-range ballistic missiles, Blair sent the Libyan leader a friendly letter of congratulation, addressing him as "Dear Muammar" and signing off, "Best wishes, Yours ever, Tony...
...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...
...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 innocent civilians. Although a Scottish court convicted a Libyan official - and the Libyan government formally accepted responsibility - for the downing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, Gaddafi still refuses to admit Libyan guilt, insisting that the real perpetrators have not been caught...
...Osama bin Laden, was the enemy Washington loved to hate. The U.S. bombed Tripoli 20 years ago last month, in what amounted to an aerial assassination attempt on Gaddafi himself after President Reagan dubbed Gaddafi the "mad dog" of the Middle East. The Tripoli blitz came amid suspected Libyan involvement in a Berlin terrorist attack that killed two American servicemen. Gaddafi's international isolation only grew two years later, after Libya was accused in the Lockerbie disaster. Two decades later, Saddam is gone from power, facing trial and possible execution for oppressing his own people, while Gaddafi is back...