U.N. Chief's Visit May Boost Gadhafi's Image
By Benny Avni 
August 29, 2007
New York Sun
Original Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/61552
UNITED NATIONS — Libya's long-term dictator, Colonel Gadhafi, is expected to receive a boost in his campaign to regain respectability next week when Secretary-General Ban will pop in for a visit meant to highlight the contribution by the once-ostracized regime for its role in peace negotiations in neighboring Sudan.
Known for his nonconfrontational style, Mr. Ban is not likely to raise the topic of Mr. Gadhafi's campaign to host a 2009 U.N. conference to combat racism and xenophobia, Mr. Ban's spokeswoman, Michele Montas, said. Libya's leadership of a committee convening this week in Geneva to prepare the U.N. conference has caused much embarrassment to the United Nations, with critics citing Tripoli's racist and xenophobic record. Critics of Mr. Gadhafi also accuse him of traditionally financing rebel groups in neighboring African countries, hoping to either cash in once the groups won wars, or emerge as a mediator if they were unable to unseat their rivals. In Sudan, Mr. Gadhafi recently hosted in his Saharan tents intense negotiations with Khartoum and rebel groups in Darfur.
We have excellent relations with Libya, Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, told The New York Sun yesterday, adding that Mr. Gadhafi is not far at all from efforts to rejuvenate the peace process in Darfur.
Mr. Ban confirmed that Mr. Gaddafi helped bring parties that have not yet signed the comprehensive peace agreement into this coming round of negotiations in Sudan. That is the reason why I will end my trip with a visit to Tripoli next week, the secretary-general told reporters yesterday, presenting his approach to defusing the Darfur crisis.
Asked if Mr. Ban would question Mr. Gadhafi about the upcoming anti-racism conference, Ms. Montas told the Sun that they will be talking about Darfur and not about the conference, which she said is only a matter for member states.
The 2009 conference, known as Durban 2, is a follow up to a much-criticized 2001 anti-racism parley in Durban, South Africa. This week, a 20-nation preparation committee convened in Geneva to lay the ground for the upcoming conference, with Iran and Cuba serving as deputies to the committee chairman, Libya.
As the committee began its work Monday, Libyan ambassador Najat al-Hajaji was greeted with hugs and cheers, according to U.N. Watch director Hillel Neuer. Ms. Hajaji then defined the treatment of Arabs and Muslim in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks as racism, saying that anti-Semitism rose, covering Arabs and others in Western countries.
Anti-Semitism was cited by America and Israel when they walked out of the 2001 Durban conference, but they used the term to refer to discrimination against Jews. Mr. Neuer was the first to report on the 2002 awarding of Libya's 2002 Gadhafi prize to a convicted Holocaust denier, Roger Garaudy of France. In the late 1990s, the Gadhafi regime was also accused of prosecuting and torturing foreign black African workers in Libya.
Last month, an Egyptian-born Palestinian Arab doctor, Ashraf al-Hazouz — released by Tripoli along with five Bulgarian nurses after being held on charges of infecting children with HIV — accused Libya of torture, and charged the authorities had arrested him because he was a foreigner. Many of Mr. Hazouz's charges were later confirmed in an Al-Jazeera interview with Colonel Gadhafi's son, Saif al-Islam.
Mr. Neuer said yesterday that he was surprised that unlike the international outrage about Libya's role as the 2002 chairmanship of the Human Rights Commission, very little protest is now raised about its central role in planning a conference to combat racism and xenophobia.
Libya emerged from international isolation recently, and last year, America removed the nation from its list of countries that support terror. Earlier this week, however, an administration official was quoted as saying no date had been fixed yet for a visit to Tripoli by Secretary of State Rice. Issues related to the 1986 bombing of a German disco and the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, have not yet been completely resolved, the official added.
Mr. Ban said yesterday that in his trip he hopes to lock in the progress we have made so far on Darfur with a three-point action plan. The plan involves deploying 26,000 U.N. and African peacekeepers by early next year, encouraging further peace talks between the government and rebel groups, and creating humanitarian conditions that would allow the return of more than 2 million Darfur refugees to their villages.