Qaddafi’s First U.N. Speech Is a Rambling Diatribe - NYTimes.com

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

UNITED NATIONS — The blaring cavalcade of world leaders whisking through the streets of New York has been a fall rite for 64 years, with one leader often thrusting himself above the din — a role played this year almost inevitably by Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, making his first appearance despite 40 years in power.

After being introduced in the General Assembly Hall as the “leader of the revolution, the president of the African Union, the king of kings of Africa,” Colonel Qaddafi shattered protocol by giving a rambling speech that stretched for 90 minutes instead of the allotted 15.

Others went over the time, too, of course. But in the case of President Obama, also making his debut speech but forced to share the limelight, he was forgiven his 38 minutes because he made such a ringing endorsement of the American commitment to the world body. “We have re-engaged the United Nations,” he said to cheers.

Outside the building other rituals unfolded with gusto. Hundreds of protesters turned up to denounce the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who used the podium on Wednesday evening to defend his election in June. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France went jogging in Central Park. Security measures turned Midtown Manhattan into a clogged obstacle course, with agents muttering in their sleeves seeming to outnumber pedestrians.

Colonel Qaddafi — dressed in a brown traditional Libyan robe, embroidered vest and shirt, with a black pin of the African continent pinned to his chest — took about 17 minutes to get to the main point of his speech, which was a demand for an African seat on the Security Council.

He also suggested that those who caused “mass murder” in Iraq be tried; defended the right of the Taliban to establish an Islamic emirate; wondered whether swine flu was cooked up in a laboratory as a weapon; and demanded a thorough investigation of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

He offered to move the United Nations headquarters to Libya because leaders coming here had to endure jet lag and because the understandable security against another attack on New York by Al Qaeda was too stringent. And he repeated his longstanding proposal that Israel and the Palestinian territories be combined into one state called Isratine.

The Security Council “is political feudalism for those who have a permanent seat,” Colonel Qaddafi said, speaking in Arabic and riffling through various documents on the hall’s green marble podium.

“It should not be called the Security Council, it should be called the terror council,” he added. “Permanent is something for God only. We are not fools to give the power of veto to great powers so they can use us and treat us as second-class citizens.”

Although a red warning light illuminates after the 15-minute time limit, United Nations officials said they could not remember anyone interrupting a head of state to explain that the allotted time had expired.

Colonel Qaddafi also attracted attention far from the General Assembly Hall. His official home in New York was the mission on East 48th Street; Libyan diplomats briefly seemed to find a place for his controversial reception tent on a Westchester estate owned by Donald Trump in Bedford, N.Y., but he apparently had no plans to go there. At the mission, he welcomed Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, while some supporters outside sang his praises.

Inside the United Nations, reactions to his speech were mixed. Some world leaders were cursing him quietly all day because he threw off schedules for side meetings. “They were not happy,” said Heraldo Muñoz, the Chilean ambassador. “Everybody had to cancel meetings and postpone things and arrive late.” (The normal two-hour lunch break was canceled to squeeze in all the leaders scheduled to speak in the afternoon, although the lunch for world leaders hosted by Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, went ahead a little late.)

At one point in his speech, Colonel Qaddafi waved aloft a copy of the United Nations charter and seemed to tear it, saying he did not recognize the authority of the document. Speaking later in the day from the same podium, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said, “I stand here to reaffirm the United Nations charter, not to tear it up.”

Michele Montas, the United Nations spokeswoman, called the denigration of the charter “unacceptable.”

Arab ambassadors accustomed to tongue-lashings from the “brother leader” laughed off the speech as vintage Qaddafi, and at least one United Nations official expressed relief that he did not talk longer. The last General Assembly address of such length likely took place in 1960, when President Fidel Castro of Cuba delivered a similarly verbose speech with a parallel theme — that all weak states were likely to face aggression from the American superpower.

“I don’t think anybody has ever done a real study of General Assembly speeches because nobody listens to them,” said Stephen Schlesinger, a historian of the body. He noted that it was only the controversial leaders who really attract attention. “It seemed like pent-up fury. It seemed like he had been smoldering over all these issues for years and wanted to get it all out.”

Many seats in the grand hall were empty, as they often remain during the speeches because leaders prefer to chat in the hallways or simply escape the grandstanding on stage.

When a leader finishes speaking, there is a tradition of other heads of state going to shake his or her hand if they so desire. So many leaders leapt up to greet Mr. Obama that it took some 20 minutes to settle the hall back down, with the new assembly president, Ali Treiki, also a Libyan, pounding the gavel and saying, “Please take your seats,” over and over, in Arabic, English and French.

Aside from the tradition of Brazil speaking first and the host country, the United States, second, slots are assigned on a first-come-first-served basis. Colonel Qaddafi, who immediately followed Mr. Obama and whose speech contained no shortage of barbs against the United States without naming it directly, also heaped praise on the idea that the United States had elected a “son of Africa” as president.

In fact he suggested that Mr. Obama remain American president for a long time, not unlike his extended reign in Libya. (Colonel Qaddafi’s Green Book suggests that in a perfect state, the government disappears and the people rule, but Libyans note wryly that the colonel has never seemed to follow his own advice.)

Diane Cardwell and Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting.