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Revealed: Blair’s secret calls to Gaddafi
Posted by Editor on Feb 27, 2011 | Comments Off
Editor's Note: I guess the Foreign Office figured that only one War Criminal could talk to another War Criminal on level terms...
Ex-PM phoned Libyan despot as troops fired at civilians, then Foreign Office told him to ring again – and tell dictator to quit.
Donald Macintyre | The Independent | 27 February 2011:
Tony Blair, widely criticised in recent days for offering Muammar Gaddafi "the hand of friendship" seven years ago, made an extraordinary personal intervention when he twice phoned the embattled Libyan dictator on Friday and asked him to stop killing protesters rising up against the regime.
Britain's former prime minister made two unannounced calls to Colonel Gaddafi on Friday – the day the Libyan President appeared in public and exhorted a crowd of his hardcore supporters to "defend the nation" against the uprising and "crush the enemy" behind it. That defiant call to arms suggests that Col Gaddafi – who has rapidly returned to the international pariah status he had before the "deal in the desert" he negotiated with Mr Blair in 2004 – simply ignored the urgings from the man who pioneered the dictator's temporary rehabilitation by the West. Reports from the Libyan capital yesterday suggested that the dictator was carrying out his threat to arm supporters to strike back against the uprising.
According to Whitehall sources, Mr Blair made an initial call to the Libyan President, who has ordered helicopter gunships to fire on protesters he described as "rats" and "cockroaches". The Middle East envoy urged him to cease the attacks. The sources suggested that, after consultations with the British Foreign Office, Mr Blair was told that the UK Government would prefer the Libyan President to step down, and so he agreed to phone him again and transmit that message. There was no comment from Mr Blair's office yesterday. Government sources were unable to say last night whether ministers knew in advance about the initial phone call.
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Tags: Communitarian European Union Dictatorship, Donald Macintyre, Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, Politics, The Independent, The Maghreb, Tony Blair, United Kingdom
Saturday 26 February 2011
Revealed: Blair’s secret calls to Gaddafi | Philip Brennan
