Less than two weeks ago, I came across this AP report about Libya’s latest overtures to the U.S., which offers grounds for cautious optimism:
Libya would like to open a new chapter in relations with the United States by tapping into a major government fund to invest in American corporations and by sending thousands of students to study in the United States, a son of Libya’s leader said Friday.
In an interview, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, a son of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the leader of Libya, also outlined plans for Libya to move from the one-man rule of his father to a constitutional democracy as part of the country’s modernization process. . . .
Seif Qaddafi, who was a central figure in normalizing Libya’s relations with the United States, is on a private visit to the United States. But his trip included meetings with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, other administration officials and many members of Congress.
But I just noticed that the New York Post ran this piece of gossip a few days after that story:
IF only folks could get along as well in the Mideast as they do in Greenwich Village, where a party was thrown Saturday night for Seif al-Islam Khadafy, son of Libyan strongman Moammar Khadafy. The host was Nat Rothschild — son of British Lord Rothschild, a major donor to Jewish causes and Israel — at Nat’s townhouse on St. Luke’s Place.
Seif Qaddafi really is making the rounds. Nat Rothschild seems to affiliate more with upper-crust playboys than Jews (he was, after all, a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club at Oxford), but that he can party-hard with the dictator’s son is an additional sign that Libya truly intends to modernize, for better or worse.