Qaddafi and Africa's International Relations

Abstract

By any standard, no other third-world leader in recent times has earned as much notoriety for foreign adventurist policies as Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi. The Libyan President has on different occasions embarked on a militant course of confrontation with the United States in defence of his controversial definition of territorial air space over the Gulf of Sidra. Gulf of Sidra. During the 1982 war between Britain and Argentina, Qaddafi shipped more than $100 million worth of weapons, including 120 Soviet-made SAM-7 missiles, to Buenos Aires.1 His name has since been linked with bombing and shooting incidents in Britain, which eventually led the Government there to sever Anglo-Libyan diplomatic links in April 1984;2 with arms supplies to Nicaragua, the Irish Republican Army, and several secessionist movements in Africa; with coup plots in a number of countries, including Pakistan;3 and he has openly assaulted some of his neighbours, notably the Sudan and Chad.4 Then, in December 1985, the Libyan President was linked to the daring attacks by P.L.O. gunmen on the Israeli Airline's check-in counters at the Vienna and Rome airports, in which at least 16 people lost their lives and 120 were injured.5