Libya wants to open a new chapter in relations with the US by tapping into a major government fund to invest in US companies and sending thousands of students to study in the US, the son of Libya’s leader said.
In an interview on Friday, Seif al-Islam Qaddafi also outlined plans for Libya to move from the one-man rule of his father, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, to a constitutional democracy as part of the country’s modernization process.
The younger Qaddafi said he expected a constitution providing for democratic elections to be adopted by September next year — the 40th anniversary of the 1969 revolution that brought his father to power.
He said he also expected Libya to modify its central government to a model similar to the US federal government, with strong regional and local governments.
Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, who was a key figure in normalizing Libya’s relations with the US, left the political stage in August and is on a private visit to the US. But his visit had definite political overtones, including meetings with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, other administration officials and many federal legislators.
It also coincided with Friday’s confirmation of Gene Cretz as the first US ambassador to Libya in 36 years. Seif al-Islam Qaddafi was in Washington on Thursday when the Senate approved the appointment after it was verified families had received full compensation from Libya for the loss of relatives in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The bombing killed 180 Americans.
This week’s events capped a halting, five-year rapprochement between the two countries that began in 2003 when the Libyan leader renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The process gained traction in August when the US and Libya agreed on the compensation deal.
The younger Qaddafi said his main message was: “We are good people, and nice. We’ll make business. We’ll invest. We have friends here in the states and we have a new chapter in the relations.”
He said Libya’s sovereign wealth fund, a government-owned investment fund of almost US$100 billion, “wants to invest here in America” despite the current financial crisis. He didn’t say how much Libya would invest.
Because the fund is new, he explained, “we avoided that tsunami, the big wave. We escaped that risk, and now we are in good shape to invest right now.”
Libya hopes that some of the US businesses it invests in will transfer technology to the North African country “like other countries are doing,” he said.
Libya’s other major focus is promoting education links with the US and it expects to sign a cultural and educational agreement with the US government next month, he said.
“We hope to send ... thousands of our students to study here. And also, we are talking right now with many American schools and universities to come and operate in Libya,” he said.
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
CHEER ON: Students were greeted by citizens who honked their car horns or offered them food and drinks, while taxi drivers said they would give marchers a lift home Hundreds of students protesting graft they blame for 15 deaths in a building collapse on Friday marched through Serbia to the northern city of Novi Sad, where they plan to block three Danube River bridges this weekend. They received a hero’s welcome from fellow students and thousands of local residents in Novi Said after arriving on foot in their two-day, 80km journey from Belgrade. A small red carpet was placed on one of the bridges across the Danube that the students crossed as they entered the city. The bridge blockade planned for yesterday is to mark three months since a huge concrete construction
DIVERSIFY: While Japan already has plentiful access to LNG, a pipeline from Alaska would help it move away from riskier sources such as Russia and the Middle East Japan is considering offering support for a US$44 billion gas pipeline in Alaska as it seeks to court US President Donald Trump and forestall potential trade friction, three officials familiar with the matter said. Officials in Tokyo said Trump might raise the project, which he has said is key for US prosperity and security, when he meets Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for the first time in Washington as soon as next week, the sources said. Japan has doubts about the viability of the proposed 1,287km pipeline — intended to link fields in Alaska’s north to a port in the south, where
RSS