TRIPOLI, 27 October — Libyan Leader Muammar Qaddafi yesterday spurned a fresh attempt to prevent his country from severing ties with the Arab League.
Qaddafi, who has threatened several times to leave the group over its alleged failure to uphold Arab causes, notably the Palestinian issue, met for an hour here with League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. But the talks appeared to have not gone well. “I have not succeeded in convincing the Libyan party to go back on its decision,” Moussa told reporters after the meeting.
However, Moussa, who flew in from Cairo for the talks and also met with African Unity Minister Ali Abdul Salam Triki, said that “consultations” were still going on between Libya and the 22-member organization.
Libya informed the League on Thursday of its decision to pull out from the pan-Arab body without officially announcing a reason. However, both Moussa and Triki had said the decision was taken to protest against the “Arab stance in general,” although the country’s ties with the grouping have been rocky for some time.
A senior League official also told AFP on condition of anonymity that Tripoli had grown impatient with a lack of concrete action on the two-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict and US threats to strike Iraq.
It is not the first time that Qaddafi has threatened to pull out of the Arab League. In March, he called on his country’s Parliament to examine a Libyan pullout because of the alleged shortcomings of the organization’s assistance to the Palestinians. That threat prompted an urgent visit by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher.
Libya also considered quitting in 1998 because of the “defeatist” attitude of Arab states toward the UN sanctions imposed on Tripoli over the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing, for which it has now agreed to pay compensation. At the same time, Qaddafi decided to focus on relations with non-Arab African states, but again Libya chose to stay in the League after a visit by Maher’s predecessor.
In yesterday’s talks, Moussa, quoted by the state JANA news agency, told Qaddafi he was “very embarrassed by the Libyan request to withdraw, which comes as the Arab nation is going through a dangerous period because of its weakness”.
“Libya’s presence in the Arab League will encourage the organization to take decisions which we need to overcome this difficult period,” Moussa said.
When he arrived at the airport, he chided the Libyan leader, saying: “It is not an easy thing to abandon one’s Arab identity, which is not a suit that one can simply take off.” But he added, “Libya is an Arab country and must always be part of the Arab family,” and conceded its unhappiness was a “message to the Arab nation to act.”
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail was also in Tripoli to try and get the Libyans to back down on the threat, JANA said. Qaddafi has made a spate of stinging remarks on the League in recent months. “Stop begging. Ever since 1957, the Arabs have been negotiating for (the return of) 42 percent of Palestine, while the Africans have not let go of an inch of their territory,” he said in July.
The same month, he accused the Arabs of showing “naivety” toward the United States, and branded as “extreme folly” US threats of military action to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein over his alleged weapons of mass destruction.
But Qaddafi also took his Arab counterparts by surprise in September 2001 when he proposed that the League accept Israel as a member if the Jewish state agreed to the return of all Palestinian refugees.
League members have the right to withdraw membership, but only after a year’s prior notice. During that period, the member must fulfill its normal obligations to the organization.
