Gadhafi Proposes Establishment of ‘Isratine’

Moammar Gadhafi did his best to steal the show at the U.N. General Assembly today, wearing a bronze robe with a gigantic Africa-shaped pin and rambling on for more than 90 minutes—six times the 15-minute-per-speaker limit—about everything from Israel’s war in Gaza to the Kennedy assassination. (He did not, however, break Fidel Castro’s record; the Cuban leader spoke at the United Nations for four-and-a-half hours in 1960.) Reading from a crumpled sheaf of what looked to be three-ring, ruled notepaper pages—complete with doodles along the margins—Gadhafi announced that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be solved by the establishment of a new state called Isratine. He also brandished a copy of the U.N. Charter, which he at one point apparently tried to rip in half—symbolizing, we think, the violation of its principles by the power structure of the Security Council. He did, however, take the time to commend Barack Obama for his speech calling on his fellow leaders to put the “united” back in the United Nations. Sadly, the U.S. delegation got up and exited the gigantic gold-domed General Assembly Hall before Gadhafi took the podium, leaving a low-level note-taker to hold down the fort.

Gadhafi slams Security Council in 1st UN visit [AP]
Qaddafi’s First U.N. Speech is a Rambling Diatribe [NYT]