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Gaddafi wants thanks from West
15/10/2004 19:05 - (SA)
Tripoli - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi called on the West to thank him for making the world a safer place and said his country supported the war against terror as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder visited on Friday.
Schroeder's trip to Libya was the first ever by a post-war German chancellor and the latest by a Western leader since the former pariah state returned to the international fold last year.
Gaddafi said that "regardless what other nations were doing", Libya supported the international war on terror.
Germany and other western states owed him their gratitude "for his services to international peace", he said.
Schroeder said Libya was "on the right track".
"This country has changed politically and we can only welcome that," he said.
Agreeing to pay millions of dollars compensation for attacks has been a key element of Libya's efforts to be welcomed back into the international community, which was clinched late last year after announcing it was abandoning attempts to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Gaddafi and Schroeder had agreed in a first meeting late on Thursday on the importance of developing relations between their countries following a deal last month for Libya to pay compensation to 168 mainly German survivors of a 1986 attack on a Berlin nightclub.
Tripoli has also paid damages to the relatives of people killed in the bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, and it reached agreements in January over a French airliner blown up a year later.
Schroeder said after his second meeting with Gaddafi he had told the Libyan leader that Germany was prepared to help his nation improve relations with the European Union, providing Libya continued to change.
"We welcome Libya's very constructive attempt at a policy of openness," Schroeder said.
The chancellor revealed few details about whether he had discussed issues such as human rights with the Libyan leader, saying only "that no sensitive issues were omitted" from their talks.
At odds over US's role in Mid-East
However, clear differences in opinion between Schroeder and Gaddafi emerged in their first meeting.
They disagreed over Iraq, with Gaddafi blaming the presence of US troops for the continuing violence there and calling for them to withdraw as soon as possible, a German official said.
Schroeder in return expressed doubts over the wisdom of a sudden US pullout, the official added.
The two men were also at odds over the United States' role in the Middle East.
Gaddafi insisted however that Libya's relations with the United States were good and would improve further.
Gaddafi also accepted an invitation from Schroeder to visit Germany.
Aside from the politics of the visit, German industry leaders who accompanied Schroeder were seeking to drum up business in the oil-rich north African state which is keen to attract foreign investment.
Libya is already Germany's fourth biggest supplier of oil, after Russia, Norway and Britain, meeting 11% of its import needs, and German companies want to exploit the untapped resources of oil and gas.
- AFP
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