LIBYA: Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy grabbed the spotlight at an Arab summit yesterday, calling Israelis and Palestinians "idiots" for seeking separate states and saying the UN Security Council was a terrorist organisation.
The Algerian hosts of the two-day meeting gave the maverick leader a star role on the closing day, allowing him to expound at length on Arab grievances about international relations.
He said the world should thank Syria for maintaining peace in Lebanon and argued that what he called "Islamic terrorism" was mainly the result of the West's cultural arrogance.
The Arab leaders later relaunched an Arab peace plan offering Israel normal relations in return for withdrawal to the 1967 borders and a Palestinian state.
But Col Gadafy went against the grain, preaching the minority view that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is for the two peoples to live together in a single state.
His targets, including Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Iraqi foreign minister Hoshiyar Zebari, took it lightly, chuckling at his one-hour speech.
But he drew sustained applause for airing views which many Arabs express in private but which their leaders rarely utter in public.
Among the dignitaries present was UN secretary general Kofi Annan, whose own speech was conventionally diplomatic.
Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the host of the summit, hailed Col Gadafy's frankness, if not his statesmanship.
"I believe most of his opinions and ideas are real and correct but the difference. . .is that I am responsible for the state and the people," he said.
"I do not want to harm my people."