Launch of O'Clery book on Soviet coup

TÁNAISTE EAMON Gilmore has called on Muammar Gadafy to recognise that “the game is up” and stop clinging to power in Libya until the very end.

Speaking before he launched a book about the peaceful overthrow of the Soviet Union 20 years ago, Mr Gilmore expressed concern about the fighting in Tripoli and called for an immediate transfer of power from the dictatorship to democratic representatives.

The violent overthrow of the regime in Libya stands in marked contrast to the peaceful ending of the Soviet Union in 1991, he said.

“Gadafy, like so many dictators before him, clings to power . . . [Mikhail] Gorbachev, by contrast, surrendered power peacefully – with the stroke of a pen borrowed, ironically, from a CNN journalist.”

Former Irish TimesMoscow correspondent Conor O'Clery has written an account of the Soviet Union's end, Moscow, December 25, 1991, which centres on events of the day when Gorbachev signed the order ending its existence "with a pen".

Mr Gilmore said the Soviet Union’s demise and the events of the Arab Spring over the past year showed that the world was never in a state of static equilibrium.

Those who declared that the end of the Soviet Union meant “the end of history” were wrong. “This hasty rush to judgment was as wrong as the earlier belief that the world was condemned to a frozen conflict between two political blocs,” he said.

“Similarly, the economic crisis has taught us the perils of assuming the benevolence of the ‘invisible hand’ of the market.”