Abela the only EU president on Gaddafi’s ‘to-die-for’ guest list
Not exactly a star-studded guest-list, but Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi’s 40th anniversary celebrations featured some of the world’s most intimidating leaders.
President George Abela was the only European head of state to attend the lavish party, where he rubbed shoulders with some notorious counterparts.
Sudan’s Islamist president, Omar al-Bashir, who this year was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), was present for a one-day African summit Gaddafi held in his capacity as rotating head of the African Union (AU).
During the AU summit, leaders discussed some of the continent’s most vexing problems. Gaddafi accused Israel of being “behind all of Africa’s conflicts”. But no mention of the genocide in Darfur – that was an internal matter for Sudan, Gaddafi said.
Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, who turned his once-prosperous country into an economic disaster, was also present. And Venezuela’s leftist leader Hugo Chávez, now the toast of the Arab world, embraced Gaddafi warmly.
Most other European leaders boycotted the event in the wake of the controversial return of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who received a hero’s welcome upon landing in the country.
But Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi paid Gaddafi a visit on Sunday, where the two men laid a flagstone for an ambitious project to build a highway across the top of Africa.
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