VIA - Navid Nasr: LIBYA: NTC'S JALIL SAYS COLONIALISM BETTER THAN GADDAFI http://www.agi.it/in-primo-piano/notizie/201110081814-ipp-rt10070-libia_jalil_nonostante_sbagli_colonialismo_meglio_di_gheddafi

"Italian colonialism was much better than the Gaddafi regime, there is a huge distance between the two, notwithstanding the errors of colonialism itself." Such a statement by Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chairman of the Libyan NTC, is particularly meaningful especially if said, as it was, during a press conference that he held along with Italian defense minister Ignazio La Russa and British defense minister Liam Fox, which followed a meeting of the three men that took place among great security measures (especially around Jalil) in a room of the Tripoli airport.

"The Libyan people", said the NTC chairman, "know perfectly that the period of Italian colonialism went together with an era of great infrastructure building and development". And indeed "everyone knows the great buildings in Tripoli, Benghazi and other towns are Italian buildings. We think the law went its natural way in that period, fair lawsuits, fair trials. And there was agricultural development". On the other hand, the Gaddafi period "was the exact opposite", Jalil stated calmly but firmly, "all the values and principles were demolished, brought upside down. The Libyan resources were never used for the Libyan people. All the errors notwithstanding, colonialism can never be compared to Gaddafi".

Those are words that seem clearer and firmer than what Jalil had said about colonialism during the three men's meeting. La Russa in his statement at the press conference underlined again this aspect of the friendship between the two peoples i.e. the absence of resentment of the Libyan people towards Italy; he stated his appreciation for Jalil's words regarding the historical relationships between the two nations, with colonialism not representing a reason for resentment or distance but rather a drive to "a friendship that gets stronger and stronger".

[He should be hung just for uttering such sickness openly...