Bloomberg News
By Steve Scherer and Adam Freeman
October. 30, 2008
Former Italian
Prime Minister Bettino Craxi warned Libyan leader
Muammar Qaddafi that the U.S.
would bomb his country in 1986, saving the colonel's
life, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgam said today.
``Craxi sent a friend to warn that a raid would be coming in
two days,''
Shalgam said both in a speech and again on the
sidelines of a conference in Rome.
``I don't think this is any big
secret.''
President Ronald
Reagan ordered the bombing of Libya
on April 14, 1986, to retaliate against the country's
sponsorship of terrorist attacks against U.S. targets. Most of the U.S. bombs were
dropped against Libyan military sites, though Qaddafi survived an attack on his
compound at Bab al Aziziya.
Giulio Andreotti, who was Italy's
foreign minister at the time, and Margherita Boniver,
who was the foreign affairs chief of Craxi's Socialist Party, both confirmed Shalgam's
comments, Ansa news agency reported.
The U.S. bombing of Tripoli
and Benghazi in
1986 ``was an uncalled-for initiative, an error in international affairs,'' Andreotti told reporters, Ansa
said.
Craxi, who died in Tunisia in 2000, denied U.S. aircraft
permission to use Italian airspace, Boniver said, Ansa reported.
``Craxi not only said no'' to U.S.
flights over Italy,
``but he used all the channels available to him to warn the colonel,'' Boniver said.
`Mad Dog'
Reagan once
described Qaddafi as a ``mad dog.'' At least 36 Libyans died in the raids, including
Qaddafi's adopted daughter,
according to a State Department chronology of relations with Libya. A U.S.
Air Force bomber and its crew of two were lost. Relations between Libya and the U.S. have since improved.
Qaddafi abandoned
a nuclear-arms program and renounced terrorism between 2002 and 2005. Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice met with Qaddafi in September, the highest-level U.S. official to visit Libya in more
than 50 years.
Italy's relations with Libya also are
on the upswing. To compensate Libya
for its occupation of the country, Italy agreed to fund the
construction of a coastline highway as part of the so-called ``friendship''
agreement signed in August.
``This seems like
an attempt by some Italian leaders to try to ingratiate themselves with the
Libyans, probably with the hope of paving the way for increased trade or
investment in Libya's oil industry,'' said
James Phillips, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation in
Washington, whose focus includes international terrorism and Libya.
Divide
EU and U.S.
The Libyans may
separately be interested ``in driving a wedge between the U.S. and Europe,''
Phillips said in a telephone interview today.
Everything Shalgam says should thus be taken ``with a grain of salt,''
Phillips said.
The U.S. State
Department didn't immediately
respond to a voicemail or e-mail message seeking comment.
Eni SpA, Italy's
largest oil company, met today with OAO Gazprom, Russia's
largest energy company, to discuss joint oil and gas production in Libya, a day before Qaddafi arrives in Moscow.
Italy occupied Tripoli
in 1911, seizing it from the Turks and the crumbling Ottoman
Empire, and held it until the Allies took over in 1943. The
Italian military controlled the city under the dictator Benito Mussolini. In
1970 Qaddafi expelled Italians still living in Libya and confiscated their
property.
To contact the
reporters on this story: in Rome
at scherer@bloomberg.net