THE MIKIVERSE

Anger grows at Gaddafi visit

Ed Pilkington, New York
August 27, 2009 - 12:00AM

LIBYAN leader Muammar Gaddafi often lugs a Bedouin tent along on his foreign trips and has pitched one in Cairo, Rome and even next to the Elysee Palace in Paris.

But reports that he is planning to set up camp in a small town in New Jersey next month have prompted outrage from US lawmakers and a diplomatic scramble in Washington.

Community leaders in Englewood, which includes 600 Orthodox Jewish families, are trying to block plans for the Libyan leader to stay in their area during his visit to the US next month. Colonel Gaddafi is believed to want to pitch an air-conditioned Bedouin tent outside a mansion house in Englewood owned by the Libyan embassy since 1982.

Local representatives have made approaches to the federal government to try to have Colonel Gaddafi's immigration permission revoked or restricted. It has been reported that the Libyans earlier requested permission to pitch a tent in Manhattan's Central Park but were turned down.

The warm welcome that Colonel Gaddafi extended to the recently released Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on his return to Libya has angered many US politicians.

The events, and Colonel Gaddafi's planned trip to New York to attend the UN General Assembly next month, are particularly sensitive in the New York area in the wake of 9/11 attacks. Thirty-three people who died in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie came from New Jersey.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has faced growing criticism over his silence on Megrahi's release, said he was ''angry'' and ''repulsed'' at Libya's welcome home for the Lockerbie bomber after his release last week.

''When I met Colonel Gaddafi over the summer I made it absolutely clear to him that we had no role in making the decision about Megrahi's future,'' he said.

''Because it was a quasi-judicial matter, because it was a matter legislated for by the Scottish parliament and not by us … it was a matter over which we could not interfere, and [we] had no control over the final outcome.''

Meanwhile, the mayor of Englewood, Michael Wildes, said Colonel Gaddafi's planned visit to the area had caused much anger. ''We've seen him in recent days offer a hero's welcome to a convicted terrorist. This is a community that will never forget acts of terrorism.''

He will join other local politicians and residents in a protest rally outside the Libyan property on Sunday.

The lawn on which any tent would be erected sits next door to the house of rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who wrote in the Huffington Post this week that ''we don't want a terrorist funder and lover in our midst''.

The US State Department said it had not made a decision on the pitching of any tent. ''I would urge any foreign leader to be sensitive to the concerns of victims of the most horrific terrorist attack before 11 September affecting American citizens,'' a spokesman said.

GUARDIAN, AFP

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/world/anger-grows-at-gaddafi-visit-20090826-ezqn.html