Paris - Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi defended his country
from charges of terrorism, telling a French television station on
Tuesday that Tripoli was never involved in terrorism.
'Libya never committed any terrorist act,' Gaddafi told France 2
television on the second day of his five-day visit to France.
He said his country had been unfairly condemned for the acts of
individual Libyans.
'Should a state be punished for the acts of individuals?' he
asked. 'When Osama bin Laden carried out the terrorist attacks on the
United States, should his country have been condemned for that?'
Opposition politicians and some members of the government of
President Nicolas Sarkozy have spoken out against Gaddafi's visit to
France because of the Libyan leader's association with terrorism and
his human rights record.
Gaddafi told France 2 that he had not been aware of the
controversy swirling around his visit, saying that he was 'too busy
to read the newspapers or watch television.'
He defended his human rights record by denying that there were any
political prisoners in his country and that he did not allow dissent.
'I do not rule,' he said. 'The Libyan people rule democratically.'
In the interview, which was carried out Tuesday morning, Gaddafi
also said that Sarkozy had never broached the issue of human rights
with him, contrary to what the French president had said on Monday.
After that comment was leaked, Gaddafi was immediately
contradicted by Sarkozy's chief of staff, Claude Gueant, who told
journalists that he had heard the French president raise the issue
twice with Gaddafi on Monday.
Deputies from the opposition French Socialist Party walked out of
the National Assembly on Tuesday to protest Gaddafi's visit earlier
in the day to the body.
The Socialists had been fiercely opposed to Gaddafi's visit to
France. Socialist lawmakers and several deputies from the ruling
Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) also boycotted Gaddafi's
appearance at the residence of the president of the National
Assembly, Bernard Accoyer.
During his meeting with the lawmakers at Accoyer's official
office, Gaddafi praised Sarkozy's idea for a Mediterranean Union,
called for a single democratic state in the Mideast and criticized
what he called the 'internationalization' of the Darfur conflict.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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