I try to avoid extracting from articles that are freely available on line for posts in this series. But the rule is not hard and fast and exceptions can easily be made:
Scans of the six pages of the original article can be seen on the following links: one,two,three, four,five, six. An extract is below:
GHADDAFFI
In Dublin, February 19,1987.
“If the spirit of the present generation prevails in the West they will destroy the world”. Colonel Ghaddaffi, Prime Minister and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Libyan Arab Republic, talks to EAMONN McCANN, in this exclusive interview conducted recently for In Dublin and Channel 4’s “Diverse Reports” programme.
….What everybody wants, pronto, is The Questions, worded exactly, which we are told will be translated into Arabic and conveyed to the Colonel for approval. Any question the Colonel doesn’t want to answer mustn’t be put. Mention of the death of Woman Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy in London in London in 1984 would, it seems, be most unwise.
And then the interview….
“What we see now”, says Ghaddaffi, “is that we are being encircled. There is the American Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. To the East they are in Egypt. The French and Americans are in Chad. They are trying to reassert their military domination over us. They have never left us alone. There is a new Crusader-like spirit abroad in the west, it is motivated by anti-semitism – we Arabs are of course Semites. They are out to destroy the Arab nation completely… why else would they allow the Israelis to develop a nuclear bomb, without any protest or reservation… It is only against the Arabs that the Israelis are fighting. Doesn’t this tell you what the mentality of the West is? Doesn’t it show evil intentions against the Arab people?”
Does he believe that Britain is as complicit in all this as America?
“Thatcher is a murderer. She allowed planes to be sent from her country knowing that they intended to attack me, to attack my home and family. Naturally, one feels bitter and frustrated. We thought after the attack that Thatcher would be put on trial, as a criminal. That Reagan would be charged. But nothing of the sort happened… Thatcher is a prostitute. She sold herself to Reagan and now she has sold her country too. She doesn’t represent the interests of the British people. It is not just me who says this. It is also the leader of the parliamentary opposition in Britain and many others… the present generation in the West is the generation which brought about the First World War and the Second World War. They are infected by violence…. These attacks on us, they are charging us up, like a time-bomb which could explode. They could turn us into savage beasts. If that happens, it is they who will have done it”….
“We are not involved in terrorism. It is not our nature to kill innocent people. This is American propaganda against the Libyan people, from Ronald Reagan.”….
He says elsewhere: “It is worrying when acting interferes with serious matters, when Hollywood acting becomes acting on the international stage, when international matters, international politics are treated in the same way as in Hollywood films, with the same mentality, by the same person”.
…. in Libyan eyes the US is a mere agent of the Israeli State: not the other way round. And Ghaddaffi sees the existence of the Israeli State as a straight-forward colonialist occupation of part of the territory of the Arab nation.
“They have involved Israelis in their very government. I’m thinking here of Kissinger and Schultz. This is a great mistake. The American people should elect themselves a president who is qualified, and who will not involve the Israelis”.
Blah, blah, blah…
Hat Tip @kelliestrom
