Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 17, 1991 TAG: 9103170027
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
He said it when he invaded Panama to overthrow Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, and again when he prepared to drive Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.
Col. Moammar Gadhafi does not appear to have taken notice, or, as even some officials in the administration suggest, Bush has not yet delivered the message to him clearly.
Though he essentially had no role in the Persian Gulf crisis, the Libyan dictator has been busy the past several months, administration officials say. They say he quietly armed the guerrilla forces that overthrew the governments of Liberia and Chad, and he helped fan a wave of tribal warfare in Rwanda, Niger and Mali by supplying arms to an assortment of ethnically based rebel groups.
In the past few weeks he has been accused of resupplying two rebel groups fighting for power in Ethiopia, and administration officials say dissidents from Ghana, Gambia, Senegal and Sierra Leone recently have received military training in Libyan camps.
Bush's assumption that Gadhafi thrives on publicity misreads his more current strategy of aggressive subversion in countries to which Washington traditionally has given low priority, some officials say.
"The administration sees that Gadhafi's hands are in a lot of different pies, and yet there is a fear that sending the State Department spokesperson to denounce him will only further elevate his prestige in the Third World as the new Saddam Hussein," said Michael Johns, an analyst of North Africa affairs at the Heritage Foundation. "We will not go to war with Gadhafi, and we shouldn't, but we need to develop policies to curb his power projection."
As Libya watchers tell it, Gadhafi is liable to journey into the desert at any time to meditate for days, and then return to Tripoli convinced he must overthrow one government or another. "If there's trouble," said a Defense Department official, "you'll find his people."
Gadhafi's "people," when defined to include dissidents who have received financing and training, function around the world, from Northern Ireland to Trinidad to the Philippines.
He has defended his foreign policy as a holy promotion of his ideology, which is revealed in his Green Book as a mottled mix of pan-Arabism, mystical Islam, socialism, anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism.
Now that Iraq is crippled and Syria is tentatively allied to Washington, Gadhafi may become a more pivotal figure in Middle East terrorism. Administration officials say he recently resumed financing for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical Palestinian organization that operates in Lebanon.
The Abu Nidal organization, which has carried out more than 100 terrorist attacks in the past 17 years, has been forced to withdraw from Iraq to its base in Libya. Meanwhile, administration officials say, Gadhafi continues to offer passports, diplomatic papers and logistical support for other terrorist groups in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
Intelligence information indicates the Rabta plant, originally thought to have been devastated by a mysterious fire last year, is now producing growing amounts of nerve and mustard gases.
An 1986 American bombing raid on Tripoli quieted Gadhafi for a few months; then he invaded Chad and began funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to Noriega's struggling regime in Panama. His army was badly bloodied in Chad, and Gadhafi lost his primary Caribbean base of operations when the United States invaded Panama in 1989.
"He's not afraid to lose," a State Department official said. "He keeps rolling the dice with the thought that eventually he's got to win every once in a while."
But a growing number of officials in the State and Defense departments are urging a tougher policy toward Gadhafi. "Iraq crept up on us too," warned one official. "Are we going to get surprised again?"
by CNB