Gadaffi ... ‘he needs an operation’

Press, 25 May 1984, Page 13

Gadaffi ... ‘he needs an operation’

Manv Arabs view Colonel Gadaff’i with much the same blend of distaste and puzzlement as do the British, after their experience with the Libyan diplomatic mission in London, during which a. policewoman was killed.

Egypt, on Libya’s eastern border, will stand no nonsense from him. “We are trying to cool down our crazy neighbour.’’ the Foreign Minister, Kamal Hassan Ali, told me. "We have made it clear to him that if he tries anything in the Sudan, or attacks us as in July 1977, we will give him a strong

blow. We are not planning to hit him, but we could do so. He is a real threat.

“He grants facilities to the Soviet navy. Russia benefits from his actions everywhere. He has some 4000 Soviet experts working in Libya as well as East Germans. Yugoslavs, and Bulgarians. In 1979, out of an oil income that year of $2l billion, he Jcontracted 'to buy $ll billion worth of Soviet arms.

PATRICK SEALE

in Amman reports on the Arab

view of Colonel Gadaffi

"Sometime after seizing power (in 1969), he spent two months in an Egyptian psychiatric clinic. But his mind can’t be changed. He needs deep surgery.” Tunisia, on Gadaffi’s western border, has equals reason to be wary but is more polite.

"We must live with Libya. We believe in dialogue, not confrontation." the Tunisian Foreign Minister. Beji Caid Essebsi, told me.

"But some thousand Tunisians are being trained in Libyan camps. Gadaffi says they are to ftght in Palestine, but what is certain is

that some of them were used against us in Gafsa (scene of a recent uprising). "Last January, a group of saboteurs came in from Libya and returned there after blowing up the Algerian gas pipeline that crosses our territory to the sea. "Gadaffi says he intends to have a special relationship with the Soviet Union and is ready to grant’ it military facilities. This is an -

important political fact of which we must take note."

With United States help. Tunisia is equipping itself with a strike force of 25 to 30 advanced F 5 aircraft.

The Palestine Liberation Organisation chairman. Yasser Arafat, is no friend of the Libyan chief of state. "Wasn't he the one who said the P.L.O. was finished?” he exclaimed. "Didn't he send troops to participate in the siege of Tripoli? But it is he. not I. that now faces a critical dilemma. —Copy-

right. London Observer Service