There was one bright spot in the Prime Minister’s day at the UN on Thursday. Colonel Gaddafi did not bother to turn up for the security council meeting.
It’s just a coincidence that Libya happens to hold one of the rotating seats on the council at the moment but we all expected it was a coincidence the self styled “king of kings” would exploit to the hilt.
For obvious reasons Gordon Brown was not looking forward to being seen sat around the council table with the man who put on such a show to welcome Lockerbie bomber Abdel-basset Al Megrahi home to Libya. Especially not when quite a few of the American relatives of Pan Am 103 victims were protesting outside.
But in the end Gaddafi stood him up. He simply didn’t bother to turn up to take his seat at the top table. He did call the Security Council a “terror council” in his 95 minute long rant to the General Assembly on Wednesday which might have been a clue that he didn’t intend attending.
Or maybe it was just because the meeting started at 9.30 am. In his speech at 11 o’clock yesterday morning he was complaining a lot about being tired and demanding that the UN meet at more convenient times and places.
President Obama was chairing the meeting, as the US happen to be in charge of the council this week. And he didn’t seem upset that Gaddafi had ignored his invite. His spokesman was joking afterward about whether other countries would have stuck to their strict five minute time limits for their statements if Libya had been there.
Seriously though, Colonel Gaddafi’s presence could have been used to make an important point. To show to Iranian president Ahmadinejad that former pariahs can be welcomed into the fold if they choose to give up their outlawed weapons programmes. But the full rehabiliton of Libya and its reintegration into the world community was set back more than a little by Gaddafi’s bizarre performance yesterday.
PS Gaddafi’s huge Beduin tent was taken down yesterday. He didn’t have permission to put it up in the garden of a house he’d rented from Donald Trump in upstate New York, and it was dismantled under orders from the town of Bedford. We don’t think Gaddafi ever visited it while he was in New York.