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Libyan Chief Threatens to Defy Flight Ban and Quit U.N. [1]
['Chris Hedges']
Date: 1995-04-06
Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi said today that Libyan planes were preparing to defy the United Nations ban on flights to and from Libya and said that his country might soon drop out of the United Nations.
In an interview in a Bedouin tent near the gutted remains of his former home, which was bombed in 1986 by American warplanes, Colonel Qaddafi said he had notified Egypt, the Sudan and Saudi Arabia that Libyan planes carrying Muslim pilgrims to Mecca would soon enter their airspace.
He vowed to retaliate against any country, including Libya's Arab neighbors, who prevented the Libyans from reaching the holy site of Mecca during the annual Muslim pilgrimage season known as hajj.
"If sanctions mean that pilgrims are unable to go to Mecca, then this calls for a holy war against not only the United States, France and Great Britain, but the rest of the Arab world," he said. "If the Libyan planes are shot down or destroyed, if anything happens to these pilgrims, then it will mean that the Prophet's tomb is under the control of the United States and that Saudi Arabia is not an independent country."
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/06/world/libyan-chief-threatens-to-defy-flight-ban-and-quit-un.html?searchResultPosition=7
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