A Wet Kiss for Kaddafi

The move to normalize relations between the U.S. and Libya accelerates next month when Muammar Kaddafi makes his first-ever trip to America to address the U.N. The arrival of Kaddafi is already creating problems for New York security officials: he travels with a massive, heated Bedouin tent. Libyan officials recently asked permission for Kaddafi to pitch it in Central Park. "The location for the tent is still an open question," says a senior State Department official who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters. (One alternative: coax Kaddafi, and his retinue of female bodyguards, to pitch the tent on Libyan-owned property in New Jersey.)

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Newsweek article

Libya's unemployment rate 20.74%

OPEC member Libya's unemployment rate is 20.74 percent, a leading local daily reported on Sunday, quoting the government's latest census figures.

The report, highlighting social differences in Libya, comes before a two-day meeting of the country's top legislative and executive body, the General People Congress, which begins late on Sunday. The Congress is widely expected to endorse a Gaddafi plan to distribute more than $30 billion oil money this year directly to the 5 million Libyans in a bid to lift a million out of poverty.

Russia, Libya boost energy ties

Signalling a revival of Soviet-era strategic ties between Russia and Libya, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi said in Moscow on November 1 his country will enhance cooperation in the oil and gas sector with Russia, the word’s leading energy exporter. “We consider cooperation with Russia in the oil and gas sector as very timely at this moment ... Moreover, we have common approaches to the oil and gas policy,” Gaddafi said during talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Gaddafi visited Moscow just two months after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was his guest in Libya. During the Moscow visit, Gaddafi pitched a Bedouin tent in a Kremlin garden and invited Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for tea. Qadhafi’s Moscow visit came six months after then President Putin opened a new chapter in relations between Russia and Libya by becoming the first Kremlin leader to visit Tripoli. Russia’s energy giants, such as Gazprom, Tatneft, Tatneftegeofizika, LUKoil and Stroitransgaz are operating in Libya’s oil and gas sector. Their projects range from geological surveys, offshore exploration and development to oil refining and pipeline construction. In July, Gazprom offered to buy all of Libya’s natural gas production.

“We think alike about gas and oil policies,” Interfax quoted Gaddafi as saying. Gazprom head Alexei Miller and Libya’s National Oil Corporation chief Shukri Mohamed Ganem reached agreement to hold trilateral talks with Italy’s ENI later this month on joint projects, including a new major gas pipeline running under the Mediterranean from Libya to Europe. For now, Libya and Algeria compete with Russia to supply gas to southern Europe. Libya already supplies gas to Italy directly or through Tunisia. Meanwhile, Algeria’s Energy Ministry on November 3 confirmed that work on the undersea Medgaz pipeline between Spain and Algeria was already edging closer to completion.

The Russian authorities are also negotiating to provide Libya with a civilian nuclear research reactor and signed a framework agreement on nuclear cooperation. The civil nuclear pact signed by the nuclear energy chiefs of Russia and Libya provides for the construction of reactors in Libya and cooperation in medicine and nuclear waste disposal, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelrahman Chalgham, who accompanied Qadhafi to Moscow, was quoted by the press as saying.

http://www.neurope.eu/articles/90512.php

Italy to Pay $5 Billion to Libya in Landmark Accord

Italy agreed to pay Libya $5 billion as compensation for its 30-year occupation of the country during the 20th century. The money will be invested by Italy over a 25-year period. For VOA, Sabina Castelfranco reports from Rome.

The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday signed a "friendship pact" with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Under the pact, Italy agreed to compensate Libya for abuses it committed during its colonial rule of the North African country.

Italy will invest $5 billion in Libya in a deal that effectively turns the page on colonial-era disputes that have long tarnished their relations. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi made the announcement during a visit to the Mediterranean city of Benghazi where he met Libyan leader Moammar Gadhdafi. He said the accord would provide for $200 million a year over the next 25 years through investments in infrastructure projects in Libya.

The compensation package involves construction projects, student grants, and pensions for Libyan soldiers who served with the Italians during World War II. It also includes a coastal highway stretching across the country from Tunisia to Egypt.

Mr. Berlusconi's office said in a statement that the premier would also hand over to Gadhafi the goddess Venus of Cyrene, an ancient Roman statue taken in 1913 by Italian troops from the ruins of the Greek and Roman settlement of Cyrene, on the Libyan coast.

Prime Minister Berlusconi said this agreement should put an end to 40 years of discord and is a concrete and moral acknowledgment of the damage inflicted on Libya by Italy during the colonial era. But many Libyans who lived under Italy's domination find it difficult to forget. A man says the behavior of Italians was cruel. They treated the Libyans like dogs. Italy is Libya's biggest trade partner with 25 percent of Italian oil imports coming from the North African country. It now also hopes the agreement will open the path to further cooperation.

Italy would like to see Libya crack down further on illegal migrants turning up on Italian shores and will fund $500 million worth of electronic monitoring devices on the Libyan coastline. Relations between the two countries have warmed over the last few years but it has taken years of negotiations for the two sides to hammer out a deal on compensation for Italy's rule over Libya from 1911 to 1943.Following Saturday's agreement, Libya named August 30, Libyan-Italian Friendship Day.

Gadhafi's son says he won't succeed his father

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's son announced he will no longer be involved in politics, calling for political reforms and denying he would succeed his father, as many have expected. Seif al-Islam Gadhafi gave no explanation for his decision, and in Libya's extremely opaque politics it could not immediately be determined if it will seriously be carried out. He acknowledged the move could raise speculation of a rift between him and his father, but denied that was the case. There have been no public signs of any dispute between the two.

"I don't have any problem" with the elder Gadhafi, Seif al-Islam said in a speech Wednesday to thousands of young Libyans in the southern city of Sabha. "I just met with him before I came here." "I have decided not to intervene in state affairs," he said in the speech, broadcast on state TV. "In the past, I used to intervene (in politics) due to the absence of institutions."

Seif al-Islam holds no official post but has grown in prominence in recent years, directing economic reforms and playing a major role in negotiations that restored Libya's ties with the West after decades of isolation. That fuelled speculation he was being groomed to take power after his 66-year-old father steps down or dies, although Seif al-Islam has denied it in the past.

The elder Gadhafi has ruled Libya unquestioned since coming to power in a 1969 coup. He created a so-called "Jamahiriya" - an Arabic term he invented meaning approximately "rule of the masses" - that claims to hand direct rule to the people, but has led to an unusual system where lines of government power are unclear, there is no constitution or opposition, and Gadhafi's word is law.

In his speech, Seif al-Islam, dressed in a dark business suit, called for political reforms to better regulate Libya's system by rule of law, guaranteeing democracy, an independent press and human rights, "without harming the Jamahiriya system."

Gaddafi accuses Europeans of killing migrants

(Reuters)

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has accused European states of killing hundreds of African migrants by deliberately sinking their boats to stop them reaching Europe.

"This tragedy is unfolding. A war on the Mediterranean sea is being waged against Africans," Gaddafi told leaders of African trade unions he met in Tripoli late on Thursday.

"Europe seeks to defend itself and is doing anything it can to prevent migrants from reaching Europe. So they hit the boat and then announce all the people on board died," he said.

"They sometimes come to pretend to rescue a boat but they overturn it in order that the migrant workers on board die."

Conservation of ancient sites

The son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi unveiled an ambitious plan on Monday to protect ancient Greek ruins, conserve the country's pristine Mediterranean coastline and draw eco-tourists to this former pariah state.

Seif al-Islam Gadhafi's plan is part of an attempt to dramatically change the image of Libya — to an ecologically friendly tourist destination — at a time when the country is nearing its long-sought political goal: getting into the West's good graces.

The younger Gadhafi announced the project at a lavish ceremony inside a 2,200-year-old Greek gymnasium in the ruins of the ancient city of Cyrene, one of the country's largely untouched and unvisited antiquity sites that Libya hopes will pull in foreigners.

"Our intention is to build a complete and sustainable social, cultural, economic and environmental system in which the needs of the present allow for the needs of future generations," said Gadhafi, standing on the gymnasium's open plaza surrounded by tall, beige-colored columns.

"Its time now to join developed countries and make a statement that we are also concerned about the environment and culture," Gadhafi, who is known in Libya as "The Engineer," told reporters after the ceremony.

Touted as a reformer, 36-year-old Gadhafi has increasingly been sharing his father's spotlight and reaching out the West to soften Libya's image and return it to the international mainstream. He has no official government post, but many see him as the man most likely to take power in the North African country when his 65-year-old father steps down or dies. After spending decades as the United States' sworn enemy, Libya is embarking on a political and economic change of heart.

IHT

Lybian infrastructural projects

Libya inaugurates gigantic water reservoir in Abou Zayyan

The chairman of the Kadhafi Foundation for Development, Seif-Ul Islam Moammar Kadhafi, inaugurated on Saturday in Abou Zayyan (90km south-west of Tripoli), the Abou Zayyan reservoir of the water resources of the grand artificial river, aimed at meeting fresh water needs for domestic and agricultural purposes in the region.

The water resources in the Abou Zayyan reservoir come from a network of huge aqueducts with a diameter of 2.8, the Sidi Sayeh reservoir (50km south of Tripoli), the water of the grand artificial river via the localities of Rabta (80km south east of Tripoli) and Yaaguib where there are two reservoirs with a capacity of 400,000m3 each.

The implementation of the Abou Zayyan reservoir project started in 2004. The An-Nahr company which is under the control of the office in charge of the management of the water resources of the grand artificial river, has built the aqueducts of this project in its factories located in Brega and Serir.

This important Libyan hydraulic project called the "grand artificial river" was implemented in five stages, the first being operational since September 1994, ten years after the inauguration of the works assigned to a South-Korean firm.

At its final stage, the project will help to supply all the Libyan regions with drinking water, particularly northern towns such as Benghazi, Jdabia and Syrte, and to irrigate fertile plains in order to ensure food self-sufficiency and economic independence eventually for the Libyan people.

The cost of this project is about US$25 billions. Its implementation is in line with the studies on environmental problems linked to the "excessive" exploitation of underground water, as well as sea to water infiltration and pollution.

Work begins on 1 bln eur Libya airport

Libya said work has begun on a new 1 billion euro airport for the capital Tripoli which will be able to welcome 20 mln travellers per year.

The work is being carried out by a consortium of six companies including Vinci of France, Oderbrecht of Brazil and TAV of Turkey, under the supervision of a French research consultancy, state news agency JANA cited project director Abdel Majid Sadah as saying.

The 1,165 hectare site will be able to handle up to 100 planes, with a car park capacity of 4,400 spaces, Sadah said.

Libya’s Qadhafi launches sat-channel

The son of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qadhafi launched a satellite channel from Tripoli on August 20.

Sayf-al-Islam Qadhafi has launched Al-Libiyah, the first stage of a new media group he says he will build from Tripoli. The channel’s slogan “Together for the sake of tomorrow’s Libya”, explains that the aim behind the new media is to steer away from the usual "classical" approaches in the official media organs and added that the new channel would be committed to the national line but not be subjected to very close censorship.

Local reports say $20m has been invested in the new project. BBC Monitoring, speaking about the project, said: “The new channel is one of the media tools of the 9/1 Company that is owned by Al-Qadhafi Development Foundation that has been managed by Al-Qadhafi's son for years as a nongovernmental organization that is seen as the front for his political and media activities”.

EU to push for six medics' speedy transfer from Libya

The European Union, along with the US, has called on Libya to transfer five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to its territory, after the Libyan High Judicial Council converted their death penalty into life imprisonment on Tuesday night (17 July).

"The fact that the High Judicial Council did not uphold the death sentence is a first relief", the European Commission president Jose Barroso said. "However, our objective is a solution which allows for the departure of the Bulgarian and Palestinian medical personnel from Libya and their transfer to the EU as soon as possible", he added.

According to Bulgaria's foreign minister Ivailo Kalfin, negotiations on the transfer of the medics will get under way later today (18 July). "This decision is a big step in the right direction... For us the case will end once they come back to Bulgaria," he was cited as saying by the BBC.

Tripoli, for its part, has already indicated it was willing to consider the medics' return to Bulgaria based on a 1984 extradition deal. "There is a legal co-operation agreement between Libya and Bulgaria and we don't mind that the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor benefit from it," Libya's foreign minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam told the AP.

The six medics have been jailed in Libya since 1999, after an outbreak of HIV among children at a Benghazi hospital. In 2004, they were convicted and sentenced to death for intentionally starting the epidemic.

Tuesday's decision by the Libyan panel comes after a deal with victims' families – something orchestrated by the Gaddafi Foundation, led by the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son. Families signed a declaration, claiming they no longer insist on the death penalty, and in return received payments – one million dollars each. "

"This is indeed good news", EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero–Waldner said on Tuesday (17 July), following the announcement. She also stressed the bloc would "stand by [its] commitments to continue assisting the children, their families and the Benghazi hospital in fighting the scourge of HIV/AIDS".