Silvio Berlusconi may have suspected his Libyan guest wouldn't miss the opportunity to upstage him. So just as Muammar Gaddafi was flying into Rome in grand convoy aboard three Airbus airliners, Berlusconi announced his regrets: he would not be there to greet him on the red carpet owing to a stiff neck. It very nearly blew the meticulously planned visit. No prime minister on the tarmac? In that case, Gaddafi warned, he would simply turn back. Berlusconi made it just in time to hear the band play and see Gaddafi descend the aircraft steps in gold-tasselled epaulettes with a postcard-sized photograph pinned to his chest. The cameras zoomed in to reveal a grainy old photograph of the Libyan national hero Omar El-Mukhtar displayed by his Italian fascist captors just days before being hanged. Behind Gaddafi an old man in long robes and a walking stick tottered down the steps. This, we learned, was a grandson of El-Mukhtar, in living memory of the crimes committed by Libya's one-time Italian colonial masters. Gaddafi's four-day Italian tour had begun.
Just in case anyone had missed the point, Gaddafi's very first words were: "Berlusconi is a man of iron, he has had the courage to apologise for the crimes of colonialism." And indeed he has, though it is probably an occasion he would prefer not to dwell upon. Berlusconi made this historic public apology last year before an assembly of elders in the town of Benghazi, the scene of some of the worst Italian massacres. Gaddafi had welcomed him at the airport in a room papered with grisly photographs of the victims. A scene that was never shown on Italian television, but which was no doubt amply aired in Libya.
Italy is the only former colonial power to have paid damages in reparation for the crimes of occupation. But we don't dwell on that here. Last year the agreement was sealed in a treaty which commits Italy to paying $5bn over 20 years for roads and other public works. As part of the same deal Italy's oil company Eni had its Libyan contract extended for another 25 years. Most important for Berlusconi and his allies in the anti-immigrant Northern League, Libya committed itself to taking back migrants who tried to cross the sea from Libya to Italy.
Last month the deal appeared to have clocked in when 500 mainly African men, women and children were picked up in international waters by Italian coastguards and shipped straight back to Libya. There were protests from the Catholic church and the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, which point out that the refugees among them had been denied the protection to which they have a right. To dodge the charge that we are reneging on our obligations under the Geneva convention, the Italian government has said it intends to help Libya organise itself to enable asylum seekers to make their applications there. A diplomatic fig-leaf Gaddafi blew sky-high when he told reporters at a press conference in Rome that political asylum was out of place in Africa, where most people lack any political notions: "They come from the forest and the desert and most of them don't even have an individual sense of self." An astonishing claim, and one that probably would not go down well with his partners in the African Union.
On day two this cumbersome guest was supposed to have spoken in the chamber of the Senate, Italy's Upper House, the only head of state to have ever done so besides the King of Spain, but after opposition senators threatened to walk out on him, Gaddafi's speech has been relocated to another "palazzo" across the road. Four hours later, in the very same venue, the Senate human rights committee has organised a conference on "Foreign policy and human rights". Human rights in Libya are not mentioned on the programme, but judging by a forthcoming report by Amnesty International on the treatment of irregular migrants in that country, they should be. Amnesty International has visited detention centres in Libya where people are being held, sometimes for years, in brutal conditions. NGOs and, reluctantly, the witnesses themselves, say that every young woman who makes the long and dangerous journey across the Sahara and then through Libyan detention has been raped. On the third day of his Roman visit Gaddafi will be addressing an all-woman audience on the question of our dignity. I hope someone shouts the names of the camps where these abuses are routine.
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