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Libya
Index
Libya has used the OAU to advocate the same policies it has
espoused in the UN. During the early 1970s, Libyan diplomacy,
including offers of economic assistance, resulted in most OAU
members' severing diplomatic relations with Israel. Qadhafi has
long condemned the apartheid policies of white regimes in Africa.
In a 1973 message to all OAU members, he compared Zionist
imperialism (i.e., continued Israeli occupation of Egyptian
territory taken in the June 1967 War) with the policies of
Portugal, Southern Rhodesia--now Zimbabwe--and South Africa. He
demanded that members boycott a coming OAU meeting and that OAU
headquarters be removed from Addis Ababa if Ethiopia (then under
the rule of Emperor Haile Selassie) did not break relations with
Israel. His demand was ignored; many OAU members, both Arab and
African, saw it as a clumsy attempt to politicize the organization.
Such differences notwithstanding, Libya has been a major supporter
of African independence movements within and outside the OAU
framework.
At the February 1978 OAU ministerial council meeting in
Tripoli, Libya (already a member of the OAU Liberation Committee)
was made a member of a new military committee. Other members of the
new committee included the front-line countries against colonialism
in southern Africa: Botswana, Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, and
Tanzania. The committee's purpose was to obtain and provide
sophisticated weaponry for the black African national liberation
movements. It was at the ministerial council meeting that Qadhafi
called for the inclusion of several West European island
possessions in the African liberation movement.
Qadhafi did not fare as well in the OAU in the 1980s. In 1981
the organization approved Qadhafi as the host of the next OAU
conference. Qadhafi's bid was frustrated twice, however. First,
Morocco and its allies boycotted the Tripoli meeting because of the
SADR's attendance. Then, in November 1982, the conference lacked a
quorum when many delegations boycotted it because of the
controversy surrounding the Qadhafi-sponsored Chadian
representation. Qadhafi's third attempt to become OAU chairman in
1983 also failed when delegations wary of Qadhafi's unpredictable
and extremist policies selected Ethiopia for the next conference
site and chairman. Still, Qadhafi is usually supported by the more
radical states such as Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, and Ethiopia.
At the 1986 conference of the Nonaligned Movement in Harare,
Zimbabwe, the Libyan position was endorsed when the conference,
which included many OAU countries, denounced the United States
bombings of April 1986. At the same conference, however, Qadhafi's
denunciation of the whole stance of nonalignment caused great
embarrassment to the conference hosts and failed to win any real
conference support.
Data as of 1987
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