Gadaffi threatens Arab States

Press, 4 September 1982, Page 8

Gadaffi threatens Arab States

NZPA Tripoli The Libyan leader. Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, increasingly isolated in the Arab world, - has threatened* to dispatch “revolutionary committees" beyond his borders to destroy other Arab governments for their failure to intervene militarily on the side of the besieged Palestinians in Beirut.

In a speech marking the thirteenth anniversary of the military coup that overthrew King Idris and brought the colonels to power, he made no direct reference to President Reagan's newest proposals for a Palestinian settlement.

But the thrust of his angry and emotional discourse, lasting two hours, was that Libya would continue along a path of “battle and confrontation”- while other Arab nations,'with the exception of Syria, “knelt before the enemy." The message was that Libya.had no intention of becoming involved in either Western or Arab discussions of the Palestinian issue, even if invited.

According to an official translation of his speech, Colonel Gadaffi said that the Palestinian withdrawal from Beirut and the dispersal of the guerrillas represented "the highest treason” by those Arab States who “h'ave received the Palestinians and implemented the old American schemes to disperse the Palestinians over the Arab nation.”