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Libya’s rocky road to reconciliation*
Spectacular
diplomatic coups have been flying out of Tripoli in recent months, leading some
to call it Muammar Gaddafi’s own ‘perestroika’.
By Khaled
Diab
May
2004
Libya has
officially abandoned its programmes to develop biological and chemical weapons,
and has agreed to pay hundreds of millions of euro in compensation for the
bombing of two airliners.
In return, European leaders have been lining up to offer the Libyan leader
golden handshakes. At the end of April, Gaddafi landed in Brussels for his first
visit to Europe in 15 years. “The red carpet rolled out for Gaddafi shows how
much importance the EU attaches to Libya,” explains Noureddine Fridhi, a
political advisor at MEDEA, a Brussels-based think-tank.
The Brussels
visit marked a major watershed on Libya’s path back into the international
fold. Since a decade-old UN embargo was officially lifted in 1999, Libya has
worked hard to restore frozen economic and political ties.
But the
largely positive ‘buzz’ surrounding Gaddafi gave way to disquiet last week as a
Libyan court sentenced to death five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian
doctor accused of masterminding the deliberate infection of more than 400
Libyan children – 40 of whom have died – with HIV. According to Luc Montagnier,
the French doctor who discovered the virus, the Benghazi epidemic emerged in
1997, a year before the condemned arrived in the country.
The verdict
given on 6 May drew an unequivocal response from Brussels: “This is a setback
for EU-Libya ties,” Diego de Ojeda, the European Commission’s spokesman for
external relations, told European Voice. “The resolution of this issue is a
prerequisite before Libya can move forward in normalizing relations with the
EU.”
The condemned
medics are among the list of outstanding issues – which include compensation
for the bombing of a Berlin discotheque – the EU wishes to resolve before
friendly ties can be fully restored.
Analysts
expect Gaddafi to deliver on the promise he made in Brussels to bring his
“moral power” to bear on the case. “Gaddafi can ask for the Bulgarians to be
pardoned and I imagine he will do so to improve relations with Europe,” notes
Fridhi. “He then has no choice but to resolve issues with the Germans.”
Along with
Syria, Libya is the missing link in the EU’s ambition to forge a
Euro-Mediterranean (Euro-Med) free-trade area by 2012. Through the so-called
Barcelona Process, which began in 1995, the Union has negotiated association
agreements with 11 of its Mediterranean neighbours. “For [Commission President
Romano] Prodi, Libya was a gaping hole in his Euro-Med ambitions,” explains
Fridhi.
However, Libya’s smooth passage could be held up by its poor human rights
record. While noting some improvements during a recent visit, Amnesty
International found that systematic abuses still occur. However, a willingness
to ignore abuses carried out by friendly regimes, the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict and the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq have made many Arabs view
talk of ‘human rights’ by Western governments as little more than a ‘rite of
passage’ to markets or resources.
Nevertheless, Fridhi believes that the EU-Med partnership can help
improve the democratic climate in the Middle East, albeit indirectly. “It’s not
Europe’s responsibility to establish democracies in the Arab world – that is
the Arab peoples’ responsibility…but the EU should not turn a blind eye to
abuses.”
The EU can
use its economic and political clout to force the pace of reform by offering
carrots not sticks – as sanctions tend to hurt the people and not the leaders –
and by maintaining a consistently high moral position towards abuses.
With its tiny population and vast oil wealth, trade and cultural exchange with
the outside world could turn Libya – like Oman or the United Arab Emirates –
into a more transparent and democratic country. However, the current Euro-Med
model might work for the likes of entrepreneurial Lebanon but one size does not
fit all.
For the past
35 years, Libyans have lived by Gaddafi’s ‘Green Book’, which espouses public
ownership of the economy. This could lead to a groundswell of popular
resistance if liberalization occurs too fast, warns Fridhi.
The EU also needs to realize that the home-grown has a better chance of survival
than the imported. Libya may not be a democracy but that does not mean that it
is without democratic ideals.
This article appeared in the 13-18 May edition of the European Voice. Copyright 2004 The
Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.
ă2004 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.