After a 15-year absence from Europe, the Libyan leader pitches his tent in Brussels, writes Gamal Nkrumah The two-day visit to Brussels by the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi reaffirms the North African country's newfound position in the international community. The visit was packed with symbolic significance. Brussels is, after all, the undeclared capital of the new Europe, and the European Union. Gaddafi is doing brisk business. He hopes to boost commercial links with EU states, which are soon to become a huge conglomerate of 455 million people. He met with Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and several cabinet ministers. He also had an audience with the Confederation of Belgian Industry. But the real event of the Libyan leader's visit was his meeting with European Commission President Romano Prodi. The EU not only rivals the United States in wealth and technical expertise, but it is also far closer geographically to Libya. It is tempting to shrug off the all too eager embrace of Libya by Western powers as business acumen or commercial common sense. His last visit to Europe was 15 years ago when he attended the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Belgrade. With Yugoslavia dismembered and the NAM virtually defunct, Gaddafi is in Europe to rub shoulders with the European powers that be -- and with former foes turned into eager new friends. The basis of the new friendship is one of shared economic and commercial interests. But political and military matters are also on Gaddafi's agenda. Libya is catching up fast, and it wants to forget all past misunderstandings and misdemeanours. Gaddafi is seriously looking into the possibility of his country joining the so- called Barcelona process, an exclusive but loosely linked commercial EU-Mediterranean club. The idea is to create a free-trade area by 2014 spanning the entire European continent and the North African and Middle Eastern Mediterranean nations -- including Israel. As Libya stakes its Euro-Mediterranean claims, it will obviously be obliged to make certain compromises. It has already provided ample proof of its political change of heart. Nonetheless, the West is pressing for more concessions from the Libyans. What is not entirely known is what new compromises Libya can make. There is almost certainly a lot of arm- twisting behind the scenes, but Gaddafi, too, drives a hard bargain. Libya certainly needs a strong hand at the tiller. Bearing this in mind, the leader has rearranged his cards in order to secure his position, preferring diplomacy and a radical change of policy to facing a fate similar to that of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. For now, Gaddafi has convinced his Western friends that he's their man in Libya -- he might even be good at fighting terrorism for them Taking their queue from Europe, the Americans, too, are jumping on the Libyan bandwagon. Upgrading diplomatic relations between Washington and Tripoli is on the cards. A United States liaison office might open soon in the Libyan capital pending US Congressional notification. Even cultural exchanges between the two countries are set to emerge and be strengthened. On 23 April a US delegation was sent to Libya to begin establishing cooperation in the education sector. "It is in our interests to receive Libya back into the international community," explained US Secretary of State Colin Powell in what remains one of the most curious and controversial statements to emanate out of Washington in recent times. What could Powell possibly mean? The US still maintains an arms embargo on Libya. "Frankly, we are impressed with what they have done in recent years," Powell said. He declined to say when exactly Libya would be crossed off the blacklist of states "sponsoring terrorism". Libya has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) development programmes and opened all nuclear and dangerous weapons facilities to international inspection. In so doing, Libya has divulged important secrets of how it acquired these weapons in the first place via countries like Pakistan. Thus Libya has proven itself to be an invaluable partner in the US-led "war on terror". "Through its actions, Libya has set a standard that we hope other nations will emulate in rejecting WMD and in working constructively with international organisations to halt the proliferation of the world's most dangerous weapons systems. Libyan actions since 19 December have made our country and the world safer," read a recent White House statement. Last December, Libya joined the Chemicals Weapons Convention and destroyed all its declared chemical weapons munitions. Of far greater significance is the full commercial potential of tapping Libya's vast top quality oil reserves. Official estimates put Libya's proven oil reserves at 36 billion barrels, but some studies say that the oil-rich country's reserves might actually exceed the 100 billion barrel mark. US oil companies like Occidental, Marathon, ConocoPhilips and Amerada Hess -- the so-called Oasis Group -- want to reclaim what they have lost over the years in Libya. These companies once had the lion's share of a lucrative Libyan oil trade. The British government, for its part, is urging the EU to lift its arms embargo on Libya. Other European governments are being more cautious. Some have an axe to grind with the Libyans. The German government, for example, seeks clarification about Libya's role in the bombing of a Berlin discotheque in 1986 and in which 229 people were injured and two US servicemen were killed. Critics of Gaddafi, both Libyan and foreign, face a dilemma. He is accused of complicity in a wide range of terrorist activities in the 1970s and 1980s, but they also realise that he holds all the cards. He has started to make amends, and Western governments are bending over backwards to accommodate their one-time adversary. Libyan and international human rights groups are outraged by this deliberate turning of a blind eye by Western governments to what they allege are gross human rights violations committed by the Gaddafi regime. The Libyan Union for Human Rights Defenders, the League of Libyan Intellectuals and Writers, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other groups are incensed at the cynicism and double standards of Western governments. The founder of the London-based Libyan Human and Political Development Forum, Guma Al-Gamaty, joined 200 Libyans in a protest in Brussels against the gross violations of human rights by the Gaddafi regime. "We came to Brussels to protest the lack of freedom of expression in Libya. There are no independent newspapers -- they are considered illegal. The regime controls the Libyan media. There are more than 2,000 political prisoners languishing in Libyan jails. There are 625 prisoners of conscience on hunger strike in the notorious Abu Selim Prison in Tripoli. And the whole world is silent," Al-Gamaty told Al- Ahram Weekly. "Libyans don't have economic freedoms either. The private sector is severely hampered. There is no social justice. The healthcare sector is in shambles and the education system is falling apart," Al-Gamaty added. "Hundreds of thousands of Libyans go to Tunisia and Egypt in search of medical services which are deplorable in Libya. Billions of dollars are spent on Gaddafi's grandiose white elephant projects while the health and educational systems are crumbling at home." "He's telling the West what they want to hear. He has granted the West many concessions, but he has done nothing to ease restrictions on the Libyan people. We urge the Western governments to spare a thought for the Libyan people. We ask them not to be selfish and apply double standards. Such hypocritical policies would do the West no good in the long-term. They must not be blinded by Gaddafi's propaganda, keeping silent about the atrocities," Al-Gamaty continued. Western human rights groups concur. "This is a heinous example of political expediency overruling concern for human rights," said Ed Cairns, senior political analyst at the British non-governmental organisation OXFAM. "While Gaddafi may have signalled he's willing to play ball on the WMD issue, there's no such progress on regulating arms sales. Gaddafi has made Libya into one of Africa's biggest and most unscrupulous arms dealers. If we sell weapons to Libya how could we stop them from being sold on to deadly African war zones to which Gaddafi has regularly sold weapons in the past?" Cairns stressed. "Rewarding dictators for abandoning one weapons programme by promising to sell them other weapons seems bizarre in the extreme," he said.
