Libya launched a week of lavish events on Tuesday celebrating Moammar Gadaffi’s 40 years in power despite a near total boycott by Western leaders signalling their distaste at the welcome home given to the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Thirty African presidents flew into a city draped in flags, posters and banners proclaiming the achievements of the ”Great al-Fateh Revolution” on September 1 1969 that overthrew the pro-Western monarchy and paved the way for the Jamahiriya, the ”state of the masses”, in which power is meant to be held by thousands of ”peoples’ committees”.
But other leaders — including most European heads of state — are avoiding the event, as the fallout from the release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi continued to contaminate relations. Diplomats revealed that Britain’s ambassador to Libya, Sir Vincent Fean, has gone abroad and will not be joining envoys and VIPs at the gala events — another deliberate snub after a planned visit by the Duke of York was cancelled as the Lockerbie row erupted in Britain.
On Mondy Libyan officials reported that al-Megrahi’s condition had worsened.
The centrepiece of the celebrations is an enormous stage constructed in Green Square overlooking the Mediterranean, Tripoli’s main public space and the scene of many of Gadaffi’s famously rambling speeches. The main streets of the capital have been cleaned up and decorated with green flags and giant posters of Gadaffi in flamboyant uniforms.
Banners vaunt Libya’s ”New Dawn” and the achievements of the revolution.
Because it is Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting from dawn to dusk, events will be held only at night.
Italian air force jets — the equivalent of Britain’s Red Arrows — will stage a display on Wednesday, prompting comments about how things have changed since the US air force bombed the capital in 1986.
Other plans involve concerts of Arab and Western music, a son et lumière spectacular at the Roman ruins of Leptis Magna and a heavily promoted enactment of key periods in the country’s 5 000-year history — highlighting Phoenician trade, Roman civilisation and Arab learning.
Camels, horses, fireworks, hot air balloons and a brass band from Wales are just part of an extravagant lineup.
Libyan officials are dutifully exultant — though most ordinary people seem bemused rather than excited at the scale of the fuss. ”Of course we love our leader,” said Naji, a 32-year old driver who lives with his mother because he cannot afford to marry. ”But this is a rich country with a lot of poor people.”
Earlier, Presidents Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Omar al-Bashir of Sudan — wanted for war crimes in Darfur — rubbed shoulders at an African Union summit called by Gadaffi, the organisation’s current chairperson.
And there was a reminder of the Libyan leader’s taste for controversy when he told fellow leaders that Israel was ”behind all of Africa’s conflicts”, including Darfur and Somalia. ”As African brothers we must find solutions to stop the superpowers who are pillaging our continent,” he urged them.
The Libyan regime seems keen to limit the damage done by the reception for al-Megrahi at Tripoli airport so it is thought unlikely he will appear in public.
Seif al-Islam al-Gadaffi, the leader’s influential younger son, insisted that Megrahi had not been given a ”hero’s welcome”. No official reception had been held to mark al-Megrahi’s return and both Libyan and foreign media were barred from covering the event, he wrote in the International Herald Tribune.
But the boycott of the anniversary celebrations by Western leaders sends its own stark message to a regime that had been relishing its emergence from isolation.
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, was in Tripoli for a few hours on Sunday, but left after opening the first stage of a new highway linking Tunisia to Egypt and which Rome is paying for in reparation for the horrors suffered by Libya when it was an Italian colony. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez — current contender for the ”pariah” status Gadaffi held for so long — is expected. – guardian.co.uk