Libya on Wednesday celebrated the 35th anniversary of the "September 1 Revolution" with fireworks in public squares and a two hour speech - briefer than usual - by leader Muammer Gadhafi, explaining how the world had changed, and Libya with it.
Speaking before hundreds of members of Libya's "People's Committees", Gadhafi ran through the turbulent relations between his country, the United States, Britain and France after the attacks on a Berlin night-club in 1986, the Lockerbie Pan-Am bombing in 1988 and the downing of a French UTA flight in 1989.
"Libya showed an unshakeable will in its refusal to capitulate and found peaceful solutions ... with the Great Powers with which it could have come into confrontation, as in Iraq and Yugoslavia," said Gadhafi, adding that the peaceful outcome was a result of his outstretched hand.
Since April 2003 Tripoli has accepted its civil responsibility in the attack on the airliner over Lockerbie, in which 270 people died, signed an accord with France to compensate the 170 victims of the attack on the UTA DC-10 airliner and reached agreement on compensating victims of the Berlin night club bombing.
Libya's move from pariah status to acceptance by the West was underscored by the presence at the festivities of Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, as the guest of honour. Gadhafi's theme of "the world has changed" underpinned his comments about Tripoli's opening towards the West, especially the United States.
"We insulted each other a lot, but in the end we were all losers," he commented.
Diplomats had been expecting some major political announcements from the country's "Guide", particularly the creation of the position of state president. However, Kadhafi, who has no official state function but is the "founder, inspiration, guide" of the revolution that overthrew the monarchy in 1969, remained silent on any such change.
Referring to the "State of the Masses" - a country governed in theory by the "People's Committees" - Gadhafi called on US intellectuals to adopt this "median theory between capitalism and communism" as an example to the world.
"Like the Soviet Union, which collapsed, capitalism, imperialism and the representative theory (parliamentary democracy) are also going to crumble," he prophesied.
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