Abolish Switzerland? Gaddhafi's grudge

Tom Jones

I'm getting the impression that Colonel Muammar Gaddhafi - the dictator other world leaders seem to hate to love - has a bit of an issue with Switzerland.

Recently, at the G8 meeting in Italy (he was invited by Berlusconi - need we say more?) he proposed the abolition of the country he described as "a world mafia, and not a state" - a plan he later took to the UN. He suggests that the territory and people be divided up along linguistic lines. I don't know what he proposed to do with the Romansch-speakers - maybe their farmhouse would become the world's smallest independent state?

Of course, such a suggestion is contrary to the UN Charter and so was dismissed by the international organisation on those grounds, and by everyone else on the grounds that his proposal was assumed to be another manifestation of the lunacy for which Gaddhafi has become famous. But this, and news reports of two Swiss citizens who are incarcerated in Libya as de facto 'state hostages' got me wondering why the tent-dwelling Brother-Leader Guide of the Revolution Tom Jones look-a-like has such a grudge against the Swiss.

It turns out that his animosity dates back to an episode in July, 2008 when the police in Geneva arrested Gaddhafi's son, Hannibal (he loves it when a palm comes together, maybe?) and his wife in one of the city's hotels. They were accused of beating their servants and spent a couple of days in a Genevois clink. It must be said that Hannibal sounds like a bit of an idiot and, in addition to assaulting girlfriends and others, has reportedly attacked Italian policemen with a fire extinguisher and driven-drunk the wrong way up the Champs-Elysées at 90mph. Why he was not similarly arrested by the law enforcement authorities on these occasions is unclear - maybe the Italians and French have a higher level of tolerance for pissed-up, misogynist, violent, international playboys than the Swiss.

Enraged at such a diplomatic affront, Gaddhafi recalled Libyan diplomats from Berne back to Tripoli (I bet they were delighted about that), reduced flights between Libya and Switzerland, closed down local subsidiaries of Nestlé and other Swiss multinationals and had two Swiss citizens picked up on a charge of 'visa irregularities'. The two Swiss nationals remain detained at the Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah's pleasure, prompting the periodic teeth-gnashing of the Swiss media and government of which I had heard.

So, that seems to be the story behind why Gaddhafi dislikes Switzerland. Apparently, the Swiss just find it all mildly amusing ...apart from those poor sods stuck in Tripoli, that is...