'Your turn is next,' Gadhafi warns Arab leaders after US toppling of Saddam

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http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/29/africa/ME-GEN-Arab-Summit-

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'Your turn is next,' Gadhafi warns Arab leaders after US toppling of

Saddam

The Associated PressPublished: March 29, 2008

DAMASCUS, Syria: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi poured contempt on

fellow Arab leaders at a summit Saturday and warned that they might

be overthrown like former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

Gadhafi's rambling, off-the-cuff speech to the opening of the Arab

summit both bewildered and brought reluctant smiles to the faces of

the other leaders.

The maverick Libyan's litany of insults at Arabs and his undiplomatic

railing at the disarray of Arab regimes have become almost a

tradition at the annual gathering.

Dressed in lush purple and pink robes with a traditional Libyan cloak

and cap, Gadhafi blasted Arab countries for doing nothing while the

United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and overthrew Saddam.

" How can we accept that a foreign power comes to topple an Arab

leader while we stand watching? " he said. He said Saddam had once

been an ally of Washington, " but they sold him out. "

" Your turn is next, " Gadhafi told the leaders, some of whom looked

stunned while others broke into laughter at his

frankness. " Destruction will be yours. "

In recent years, Gadhafi has dramatically repaired ties with the

United States — once his top enemy — by giving up his country's

weapons of mass destruction programs and paying compensation for the

1988 Pan Am bombing. Libya is hoping for a landmark visit by U.S.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, though one is still not set, and

has stepped up economic ties to the West.

Still, that hasn't stopped Gadhafi from denouncing U.S. domination of

the world and criticizing other Arab countries for their closeness to

Washington.

In his speech, Gadhafi slammed Arab disunity and inaction on the

region's multiple crises.

" Where is the Arabs' dignity, their future, their very existence?

Everything has disappeared, " he said. " Our blood and our language may

be one, but there is nothing that can unite us "

" If they (Arabs) will not reorganize themselves, they will turn into

protectorates. They will be marginalized and turn into garbage

dumps, " he said.

Gadhafi also mocked a plan by the Arab League to start Arab

cooperation on a joint nuclear program. " How can do we that? We hate

each other, we wish ill of each other and our intelligence services

conspire against each other. We are our own enemy. "

Gadhafi repeated his frequently made proposal that the Israeli-

Palestinian conflict be settled by creating one democratic state

where the two peoples live together, to be called Isratine.

He threw a compliment-cum-backhanded insult at Palestinian President

Mahmoud Abbas, praising him as the " hero of Oslo, " referring to the

1993 Oslo peace accords that created the Palestinian Authority, now

headed by Abbas, but are derided by many Arabs for failing to bring a

final peace.

Abbas scowled at the comment.

Gadhafi has angered other Arab leaders with his sharp remarks at past

summits.

Last year, he boycotted the summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but gave

a televised speech saying " Liza " — referring to Rice — had dictated

the gathering's agenda.

In 2005, he told the summit in Algeria that Palestinians and Israelis

are " stupid. " A year earlier, he sat smoking cigars on the conference

floor of the Tunisia summit to show his contempt for the other

leaders.

During a 2003 gathering, he traded insults with Saudi King Abdullah

in the conference hall.