Oddities

Diplomacy, Libyan Style

The Globe and Mail:

Tripoli - As the hour neared midnight and the bonfire burned down to embers last night, the aides began to glance nervously past the sleeping camels into the big tent behind them.

Prime Minister Paul Martin had been inside Libyan dictator Colonel Moammar Gadhafi’s tent for more than an hour. The meeting, utterly unscheduled and spontaneously ordered by Col. Gadhafi over dinner, had no agenda or topic. A protocol officer threw his hands in the air. No Canadian leader had ever visited this mercurial leader, and things had very much not gone according to plan.

What were these two men doing? What deals were made in this huge Arab tent, ringed by armed soldiers, on a Libyan army base? What had the Prime Minister got himself into?

It was a strange climax to a very strange day.

While a neatly organized Canadian schedule had called for a conventional one-day state visit filled with official meetings, visits to factories and signings of contracts, Mr. Martin ended up spending a good part of the day seated on couches in a tent listening to Col. Gadhafi’s unorthodox theories. At one point, as their talks dragged on, two camels mated clumsily just outside the tent.