THE UNITED NATIONS — Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi had a lot to gripe about: He was jet-lagged. There was no comfortable place to plant his tent. Some of the diplomats on the floor of the U.N. General Assembly were distracted.
"Please pay attention!" he said at one point Wednesday during his more than 90-minute speech, his first at the General Assembly.
Nevertheless, Kadafi offered a virtual valentine to none other than President Obama, his predecessor on the podium, praising him as a glimmer of hope for the next few years and suggesting that he take a cue from Libya and become president-for-life.
"We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as the president of the United States," said Kadafi, Libya's leader since a military coup in 1969.
Obama wasn't in the room to receive the diplomatic kiss; he had left the hall after his own speech, as had Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice.
Kadafi's 40 years of one-man control has put him at odds with U.S. leadership, which only recently -- in 2007 -- removed Libya from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Lately, Kadafi has presided over a hero's welcome marking the return to Tripoli of a Libyan agent convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people, and watched Western governments that once vilified him beat a path to his door in search of oil contracts. Once a pariah, Kadafi fulfilled a long-anticipated coming-out on the global stage with his U.N. speech.
Dressed in a flowing, coffee-colored cloak with a black pin of Africa sparkling on its front, he did not mention the release of Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi from a Scottish prison last month in a speech that veered from harsh denunciations of the U.S.-led Iraq invasion -- the "mother of all evils" -- to the praise for Obama.
"We Africans are happy, proud that a son of Africa governs the United States of America," said Kadafi, calling Obama's U.N. speech appealing for global unity "completely different." "We applaud that."
But he expressed fear that when Obama's presidency ends, the world could go "back to square one" if the wrong leader replaces him.
Elliott Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as deputy national security advisor for the Middle East and North Africa under the Bush administration, said it wasn't unusual for Kadafi to personalize relationships with world leaders even when trashing their policies.
