Insults Americans : Loved Around Globe, Kadafi Tells Walters

WASHINGTON —  Col. Moammar Kadafi, at his most flamboyant in a white suit and white silk cape, told a U.S. television audience Friday he finds it irritating that American leaders consider him to be a madman but “ordinary people in the four corners of the globe do love me.”

Interviewed by ABC-TV’s Barbara Walters in the desert tent he uses as a home in the heart of Tripoli, the Libyan leader insisted that he opposes both terrorism and the death penalty and is ready for better relations with the Bush Administration.

Kadafi drew a sharp distinction between the American public and U.S. political leaders. Then he proceeded to insult both groups.

Calls Americans ‘Ignorant’

“With regard to the American people, they are completely ignorant of the world, completely, and they know nothing about the outside world,” he said.

“And unfortunately, during the recent years, the American Administration has become more interested with the outside world than with the internal problems. . . . Thus so many ills prevailed within the American society like drugs, diseases, poverty and AIDS, cancer. All of these are the result of the American Administration’s non-interest in the internal affairs of the American people.” When Walters suggested that Kadafi might have misconceptions of his own about the United States, he replied, “No, I do understand the American people very well.”

According to ABC, Kadafi arrived for the interview dressed in a white silk suit, green shirt without a collar, red sweater, white silk cape with gold braid, black alligator mules and no socks.

“In our country,” Walters said, “we read that you are unstable. We read that you are mad. . . . Does it make you angry?”

“Of course it irritates me,” Kadafi said. “Nevertheless, I do consider or do believe that the majority of the ordinary people in the four corners of the globe do love me, because they have different vision from that of the official governments. . . . We may make a try to (reach) the American people. Let me go to the American people and see.”

Kadafi spoke in Arabic, using his own interpreter to translate his words into sometimes fractured English. Although Walters remarked that Kadafi’s English was better than the interpreter’s, the Libyan strongman persisted in using his own language.

He complained that he has never had a direct dialogue with any American president, and he said he hopes that this would change during the Bush Administration.

“I know he (President Bush) is a man who is completely different from (former President) Reagan,”Kadafi said. “He’s a politician, a factual man. . . . Reagan used to treat the presidency as a theater where he performs his acts.”

Kadafi repeated his denial that the huge new chemical complex at Rabta near Tripoli was designed to produce poison gas. And despite periodic mass public executions, he said he opposes capital punishment. He said he continues to condone hanging because “the people did not approve eliminating death sentence completely.”

He denied that he supports terrorism but implied that he does not consider Abu Nidal, the Libyan-backed Palestinian renegade suspected of the Rome and Vienna airport attacks in 1985 that left at least 20 dead, to be a terrorist.

“Abu Nidal has a fair case,” Kadafi said. “He’s defending his people to liberate his country from occupation.”

He added, however, that he opposes “operations against innocent civilians.”

The interview was broadcast on the “20-20” program. It was taped Monday in Tripoli.