The former Iraqi ambassador to Libya, Ali Sabti Al-Hadithi, said that the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was very Arab, and had good inside, and the way he dealt with it was Bedouin kindness.
Al-Hadithi added, in a television interview, that Gaddafi sent a telegram to Saddam Hussein, when the Iran-Iraq war broke out, and told him that this is an absurd war, and all the dead are in the fire because they are all Muslims.
Al-Hadithi revealed that Saddam responded to Gaddafi in one of the official Iraqi newspapers, saying: “Our dead are in heaven, and their dead and your father are in hell,” and thus the relationship became complicated until it reached the point of estrangement.
The former Iraqi ambassador to Libya explained that the relationship remained complicated until 1986, when the Iranians occupied Al-Faw, and Gaddafi had a position, as he sent Jadallah Al-Talhi, who was Foreign Minister, and Ibrahim Al-Bashari “from External Security.”
Al-Hadithi said that the Libyan delegation offered to President Saddam to give them the opponents abroad, namely Muhammad al-Maqarif, Khalifa Haftar, and their comrades who were moving between Iraq and Chad.
Al-Hadithi added that Gaddafi then offered Saddam to send a Libyan division to fight alongside Iraq, in exchange for stopping Iraq’s support for the Libyan opposition.
Al-Hadithi revealed that Saddam rejected Gaddafi’s offer and ended the interview in an uncomfortable way, but the director of Iraqi intelligence, Fadel al-Barrak, and Ibrahim al-Bashari seized on the topic, and they received Gaddafi’s signals and began building on them.
Al-Hadithi pointed out that visits to Gaddafi began after that, and understandings began about preparing things for the return of relations on a simple level in 1989.
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2024-06-21 03:58:41