(CNSNews.com) – Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Wednesday accused “one country” of controlling the U.N. Security Council, “therefore forming a danger to world peace.”
His remarks aimed at the United States came on the same day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cited Libya as an example of a regime which “eventually alter[ed] its behavior in exchange for the benefits of acceptance into the international community.”
Clinton, during a foreign policy address at the Council for Foreign Relations, spoke about the Obama administration’s approach of seeking engagement “even in the cases of adversaries or nations with whom we disagree.”
Although her speech included a few digs at the previous administration’s foreign policy – saying for instance that “refusing to deal” with Iran had not altered its behavior – it was the Bush administration that restored severed relations with Tripoli in 2006, three years after Gaddafi renounced support for terrorism and agreed to end his pursuit of non-conventional weapons.
Since then, Libya has been removed from the U.S. list of terror-sponsoring states, was elected to a non-permanent Security Council seat for 2008-9, and a Libyan diplomat will soon assume the presidency of the General Assembly for the year beginning September. At last week’s G8 summit in Italy, Gaddafi and President Obama shook hands.
It has been a significant process of rehabilitation for a regime once targeted for U.N. sanctions over the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people.
Despite the former pariah’s improved international status, Gaddafi in a speech at a Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Egypt did not temper his criticism of the international system, and especially the Security Council.
“The Security Council is terrorism,” he said. It was “monopolized” by a small group – the five permanent members – and even they were dominated by “superpowers.”
“Hence, the Security Council has been reduced to one country which controls it, therefore forming a danger to world peace.”
In his remarks, a copy of which was released by Libya’s Jana news agency, Gaddafi said developing countries had been harmed in many ways by the council, which had become “a sword over our necks.”
When problems arise between members of the 118-strong NAM, he said, they should not take the issue to the Security Council – “which we neither trust nor have influence on, and which is usually used against us, and has no interest in our problems.”
Instead, NAM should form its own “peace and security council” to handle such issues, he said.
Gaddafi also demanded that Africa get a permanent seat on the council.
“The scale is tipped in favor of the North, as we see that the United States, Britain, France and even China – which is considered a Third World country but not a member of the movement – have permanent seats in the Security Council,” he said.
“But the South – the whole Southern American continent, Africa, South Asia – have no permanent seats in the Security Council … this is undemocratic.”
Gaddafi has ruled Libya since seizing power in a coup in 1969 and is the world’s second longest-serving head of state (after the king of Thailand).
In annual evaluation by the democracy watchdog Freedom House, Libya has rated the lowest possible scores for political rights and civil liberties every year since the assessments were started in 1972.