Gaddafi visit 'marks dirty deal'

The group Human Rights Watch slammed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's visit to Italy, yesterday, saying it "celebrates a dirty deal" under which the two countries "run roughshod over refugee and migrant rights."

"It looks less like friendship and more like a dirty deal to enable Italy to dump migrants and asylum seekers on Libya and evade its obligations," the group said in a statement.

Rome has stepped up its relations with Tripoli in recent years in a bid to rein in a massive influx of migrants, many of whom come by boat from Libya across the Mediterranean.

The European refugee agency noted last week that Libya is the only African country that is not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, does not have any asylum procedures and often detains people seeking protection indefinitely in extremely poor conditions. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi met Colonel Gaddafi and his 200-strong entourage at Rome's Ciampino airport at the start of the three-day visit aimed at consolidating a friendship treaty signed last year.

"The page on the past has been turned and a new page of friendship has opened," the leader of the oil-rich north African state said after meeting President Giorgio Napolitano, hailing "this new generation of Italians for having had the great courage to resolve questions of the past."

The visit seals a major rapprochement symbolised by the August 2008 treaty under which Italy will pay five billion dollars (€3.5 billion) over the next 25 years as compensation for Rome's 1911-47 military occupation and colonisation of Libya.

While "no compensation is possible for what colonial Italy did to the Libyan people, (the treaty) is the sign that Italy condemns colonialism (and) has apologised for what happened, and that is what allowed me to come here today," Col Gaddafi said.

At the risk of sparking controversy, on his arrival Col Gaddafi sported on the front of his uniform a photograph of a Libyan resistance leader during the colonial era.

The picture showed Omar Al-Mokhtar, nicknamed the Lion of the Desert, at the time of his arrest in 1931 under the fascist regime of then Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

Col Gaddafi's visit comes amid criticism of Italy's decision to return to Libya some 500 would-be immigrants caught in international waters under a new policy introduced last month.

Col Gaddafi, the Arab world's longest serving leader who has been in power since 1969, is to address the Italian Senate today.

Senators of the opposition Democratic Party and others plan to boycott the speech in protest at Colonel Gaddafi's policies.

In 2007, Tibetan spiritual leader and Nobel peace laureate "the Dalai Lama wasn't allowed to address the Senate while it is allowed for Col Gaddafi, a dictator," the head of the small Italy of Values (IDV) group in the Senate, Felice Belisario, said in a statement.

Benedetto Della Vedova, a lawmaker from Mr Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, also spoke out against the event, saying: "A solemn speech... before the Senate seems neither justified nor opportune."

Col Gaddafi who will also attend next month's Group of Eight summit in Italy as the rotating president of the African Union, has returned to the international fold since abandoning ambitions to build weapons of mass destruction in 2003.