Lack of Surprise Greets Word of U.S.-Libya Ties
CAIRO, May 15 — The normalization of U.S.-Libya relations is a natural marriage of an American administration desperate for friends and oil in the Middle East and a government that needs to open its economy to the outside world, Arab and exiled Libyan observers said Monday.
The announcement was called proof that promotion of democracy is no longer a top priority of the Bush administration, which is grappling to hold Iraq together and has turned attention toward building alliances against a hostile Iran over its nuclear program. Libya has been ruled by Moammar Gaddafi since he seized power in 1969.
“The timing can be explained by a need for the United States to have a positive breakthrough in the Middle East,” said Mohamed Sayed Said, a political analyst at the Egyptian government-run Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “With Libya, Washington gets a regime that has converted itself from radicalism to accommodation.”
“It’s self-evident,” Said went on, “that there is a retreat from democracy and that in the current atmosphere, the United States is aligning itself with nondemocratic regimes. Democracy is not going to be the point of departure for relations between the United States and governments in the region.”
washingtonpost.com