Libya threatens sheep trade with Australia

Press, 29 April 1987, Page 11

Libya threatens sheep trade with Australia

NZPA Sydney By Nick Brown Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, has threatened to cancel -Libya’s multi-million-dollar live sheep trade with Australia, according to an Australian observer to a conference in Tripoli.

An Australian Democrat candidate, Mr Richard Jones, who returned from Libya after attending a conference of Pacificbased revolutionary groups, said Colonel Gaddafi was upset at the Australian Government’s criticisms of Libyan

moves into the Pacific. The 200-member conference was organised by the World Committee against Racism, Zionism and Imperialism and the Gaddafi-led global revolutionary group, Mathaba. Mr Jones said that the Pacific zone head of Mathaba, Dr Mahfowd, told him that Libya would cut off Australia’s exports, including its live sheep trade (worth about sAust3s million; $42 million a year) if Australia did not return to its “traditional moderate stance” on Libya. The legal adviser for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, Mr Michael Mansell, who created a disturbance last week when it was reported he had asked for Libyan aid for radical Aboriginal groups, was among the delegates to the conference. Mr Jones said he was surprised there had been no representatives at the conference from New Zealand Maori radical groups which he believed were more militant than Mr Mansell or any Aboriginal group.