Libya-Regional, Politics, 8/13/2003

Libya's Leader of the Revolution Colonel Muammar al Qathafi said on Monday as reported by the official news agency in a welcome speech to the Croatian persident Stefan Mizich visiting Libya:

Through cooperation and friendship most international problems could be solved peacefully. We regret that recently some parties of major states are acting outside the United Nations mandate and beyond the United Nations charter. What happened in Iraq is a serious precedent during this epoch. This takes us back to the era of the league of nations which collapsed through such behaviour. We know that it is Hitler who acted outside the charter of the League Of Nations and he caused the collapse of the League Of Nations and involved the world in the second world war. We have suffered quite a lot from wars and we established the United Nations. Now a new Hitler emerges and transforms the United Nations into the league of nations. All acts outside the charter of the United Nations have to end. The international community has to end that. Such acts do not match the spirit of the age and undermine all that we have built after the second world war.

The spirit of the age is cooperation, peace, freetrade, flow of goods and services over borders, the flow of world currencies and the spread of culture without borders. This is the spirit of the age. But if we return once again to the diplomacy of ships this will be highly serious. Its is very dangerous to conduct talks through guns. All the world is now concerned and the nations are terrified.

There is no dividing line between terrorism and self defence. Even the definition of terrorism is not known. We do not know who is a terrorist today. There is no unanimity on one answer. All the nations have different answers and therefore a large number of them are accused of terrorism by those who believe they are fighting terrorism. If the struggle of the Palestinian people to liberate their land is terrorism then what is a legitimate struggle. It is now emerging that the one who has a rocket to use is not a terrorist and those who do not have such means and only possess hand grenades or a pistol for self defence are considered terrorists. In this meeting we wish to express the concern of the whole world and we strongly condemn any acts outside the United Nations charter. We are calling on those rogue states to return and abide by the United Nations charter. They have to respect the international community represented by the United Nations.