US aided and advised Gadafy, secret documents indicate

DOCUMENTS FOUND at Libyan intelligence headquarters in Tripoli reveal that former senior US officials had been advising Muammar Gadafy on how to survive in spite of efforts of western powers to hasten his removal, al-Jazeera has reported. Contradicting White House calls for the dictator to step down or be removed from power, the advice given by at least one former US diplomat was that he “should step aside [but] not necessarily relinquish all his powers”.

According to minutes of an August 2nd meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo, former assistant secretary of state David Welch gave advice to two senior aides of Col Gadafy so he could improve his propaganda war by putting forward several “confidence-building” measures. Mr Welch, a leading figure in the Bush administration, negotiated the 2008 deal to restore US-Libyan diplomatic relations.

Mr Welch – now employed by the US Bechtel Corporation involved in lucrative construction projects in the Middle East – met Muhammad Ahmad Ismail and Abubakr Alzleitny to instruct the Gadafy regime on ways to undermine Libya’s rebels with the aid of foreign intelligence agencies, including Israel’s Mossad.

This was significant because a substantial proportion of the fighters in the rebel movement come from Muslim fundamentalist groups who are veterans of the Afghan or Iraq campaigns or deemed “terrorist organisations” by the US. Col Gadafy long battled fundamentalists, many of whom were from the east of Libya, which became the rebel stronghold.

February demonstrations that grew into the rebellion were sparked by the collapse of talks on compensation between the government and a lawyer representing the families of over 1,000 Libyan fundamentalists slain during a 1996 prison revolt. One of the documents stated: “Any information related to al-Qaeda or other terrorist extremist organisations should be found and given to the American administration but only via the intelligence agencies of either Israel, Egypt, Morocco, or Jordan . . . America will listen to them . . . It’s better to receive this information as if it originated from these countries.”

The papers also reveal that Mr Welch advised the Gadafy regime to exploit the ongoing unrest in Syria by pointing out the “double standard adopted by Washing- ton” between the Libyan and Syrian situations. “The Syrians were never your friends and you would lose nothing from exploiting” the different treatment given to the two countries, thereby embarrassing the West.

The documents also say Mr Welch castigated Qatar, which played a key role in securing Arab backing for Nato intervention. He described its policy as “cynical” and an attempt to divert world public opinion that had focused on the uprising in Bahrain.

Other documents implicate US congressman Dennis Kucinich, a strong opponent of western military efforts in Libya. In a letter to Col Gadafy’s son Saif al-Islam, Mr Kucinich urged him to lobby lawmakers to end their support for the National Transitional Council and asked for evidence of corruption and rebel connections with al-Qaeda.

A US state department spokesman said Mr Welch was a “private citizen” acting in his “private capacity” and did not “carry any messages from the US government.” Mr Kucinich said the documents relating to his activities were fabricated.