Arab nations and “even the Palestinians” should be allowed nuclear weapons as long as Israel’s nuclear ambitions are tolerated, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi said in an interview broadcast yesterday.
Israel is widely considered to be the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear state, and Qaddafi told Britain’s Sky News television that the international community should also allow its Arab neighbors to develop nuclear weapons.
“If the Israelis have the nuclear weapons and the nuclear capabilities, then it is the right of the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Saudis to have the same — even the Palestinians should have the same because their counterparts, or their opponents, have nuclear capabilities,” he said.
“And, if we don’t want this situation, so we’ll have to disarm the Israelis from their nuclear weapons and capabilities,” he said.
Qaddafi said he would oppose Iran acquiring nuclear weapons if it acknowledges such a goal, but noted Tehran’s insistence that its nuclear program is peaceful — something that Western powers dispute.
“Iran, up to now, hasn’t said it is manufacturing a nuclear weapon: Iran says it is enriching uranium,” Qaddafi said.
“If Iran were to manufacture nuclear weapons, nuclear arms, then all of us, including us, will be against them. But Iran has not said so,” he said. “Our position is clear and it should be clear and evident ... that we are against anyone who manufactures, possesses a nuclear weapon, whether it is Iran, America, Libya, or the Israelis.”
Meanwhile, Qaddafi apologized for the first time for the killing of a British policewoman shot from the Libyan embassy in London in 1984. However, he also said that the killer had not been identified.
Yvonne Fletcher, 25, was shot in the back while policing a peaceful demonstration outside the embassy on April 17, 1984.
Qaddafi was asked if he had a message for Fletcher’s family.
“She is not an enemy to us, and we are sorry all the time and our sympathy, because she was on duty, she was there to protect the Libyan embassy, but this is the problem that should be solved — but who did it?” he said.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
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