Nelson Mandela was back in Libya for a second time on Wednesday, but the welcome was no less effusive. The streets of the town of Zwarah, close to the Tunisian border, were decorated with portraits of Mandela, South African flags, and banners attacking the US as a colonial power.
Some 2 000 Libyans, ranging from officials to children, witnessed a ceremony in which Mandela awarded his host, Muammar Gaddafi, with South Africa’s highest honour, the Order of Good Hope, for his years of support to the apartheid struggle.
Speculation in South Africa has been that Mandela returned to Libya only because he was embarrased by Gaddafi’s showering of honours upon him last week, and he felt obliged to reciprocate.
Mandela made no direct mention of the Lockerbie affair, instead urging world leaders to “tackle their disputes with moderacy” in order to avoid conflicts, and praising the “magnificent job” done by the United Nations.
Gaddafi was more direct, saying that almost all the nations at the Commonwealth summit had opposed Britain’s stand on Lockerbie, obliging Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to open the door to the possibility of a trial in a neutral country.
Gaddafi added that what Mandela was doing “is not mediation as much as it is an expression of Mandela’s conviction of the justice of the Libyan stand and the soundness of its suggestion to hold the trial in a third neutral country.”