Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi has marked the beginning of his African Union presidency by giving a rambling speech about Darfur, in which he absolved Sudan and blamed Israel for the troubles.
The controversial leader was addressing a joint meeting between representatives from the United Nations and the African Union when he made the offending remarks, for which he provided no evidence.
Brushing aside International Criminal Court charges that Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir is orchestrating genocide in Darfur, Colonel Gaddafi said the Jewish State and other "foreign forces" were to blame.
Over the past six years, civil unrest in Darfur has claimed an estimated 200,000 lives, as well as creating more than 2.7 million refugees.
Arab groups including the notorious Janjaweed militia are accused of razing dozens of villages as part of a brutal campaign against African tribesmen, who have been fighting a low-level insurgency against Khartoum.
And while most observers believe the militias are funded and equipped by the Arab-dominated government, which claims just 10,000 have died, the ever-colourful Colonel Gaddafi has a different take on matters.
"Why do we have to hold President Bashir or the Sudanese government responsible when the Darfur problem was caused by outside parties," he asked while speaking on state news agency Jana.
"Tel Aviv (Israel) … is behind the Darfur crisis," Reuters quoted him as saying. "It is not a secret. We have found evidence proving clearly that foreign forces are behind the Darfur problem and are fanning its fire."
The controversial figure made his remarks less than one month after ascending to the helm of the oft-panned African Union.
Within days of being elected as the chairman of the organisation, Libya's flamboyant leader had raised eyebrows by telling delegates in Addis Ababa: "Coups are fine, so long as they are staged peacefully."
He rejected Western-style democracy - saying the "system that is being tried in Africa has not been successful" - and said of Somalia's rampant piracy problem: "It is not piracy; it is self defence … It is a response to greedy Western nations who invade and exploit Somalia's resources illegally."
Several African Union leaders are known to harbour grave concerns about Colonel Gaddafi's ability to unite its 53 member states.
Approval of America is high across vast swathes of Africa, due in large part to the success of former US president George W Bush's $50 billion HIV/Aids programme, Pepfar. But in sharp contrast, Libya was only removed from America's terrorism watchlist in 2006.
The International Criminal Court is due to announce on March 4 whether it will issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Bashir.
And we all know what a fount of reason and sanity Gaddafi is, don't we...
Posted by: Lynne (weirdvis) | February 25, 2009 at 02:12 PM
I wish President Reagan would have finished the job on that whack-job.
Posted by: Casey Brown-Myers | February 26, 2009 at 08:32 PM
No one in Africa really takes the Libyan "Brother Leader" seriously, except the pariahs, like Mugabe. Come to think of it, I don't think even Mugabe takes him seriously, which is says a lot.
A couple of years back, Gaddafi poured in fuel and medical supplies into Zimbabwe to help Mugabe on the promise that he would be given vast swathes of land on which to raise cattle, as well as certain amounts of goods, like beef per year.
Mugabe never honoured the agreement, and Gaddafi quietly stopped.
His United States of Africa idea has been roundly rejected by all African leaders.
His tenure at the Au, however, should be watched closely, he is definitely going to do and say some crazy stuff before they take microphone from him.
Posted by: Denford | February 26, 2009 at 11:18 PM
Yup I'm sure there'll be plenty more interesting comments to follow. What worries me though is that while most regional leaders reject his United States of Africa approach, they for some reason still saw fit to elect him as the head of the AU.
That reminds me of the Zimbabwe situation quite a bit. All the African leaders condemn Mugabe behind closed doors, but when asked to come out and denounce him publicly they suddenly get coy. It's disappointing on both fronts.
Posted by: Martin (riverScrap.com) | February 28, 2009 at 04:37 PM