Muammar Gaddafi appears not to have read David Aaronovitch’s Voodoo Histories:
”Please pay attention!” he said at one point during his 96-minute speech, his first to the General Assembly in his 40 years as a leader.
Clad in a flowing cloak with a black pin in the shape of Africa sparkling on its front, Mr Gaddafi did not mention the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi from a Scottish prison last month. His speech veered from harsh denunciations of the invasion of Iraq – the ”mother of all evils” – to praise for Barack Obama.
His rambling address not only threw the General Assembly’s schedule into disarray – he had been allowed 15 minutes – but took in an attempt to tear up a copy of the UN charter, talk of reparations for colonialism and even the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
”I’m jet-lagged,” he said, complaining he had been awake since 4am and demanding the UN be moved out of the United States, whose security measures were like ”being a prisoner in the Guantanamo camp, where there is no free movement”.
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Mr Obama and the US team chose not to stay for Mr Gaddafi’s speech, but those who did were treated to his views on swine flu (it might have been made by the military in a lab so companies could make money on the vaccine) and to the dictator who styles himself ”King of the Kings of Africa” calling the US President ”our son Obama”.
Bemused diplomats then heard him suggest that Israel was behind JFK’s assassination, because Kennedy wanted to investigate its nuclear plant.
The only comment that seemed to draw support was his critique of the UN Security Council. While his efforts to rename it the ”terror council” might have been viewed as over the top, the criticism that it is too narrowly based resonated with many.
