The Most Beautiful Place On God's Earth

20 Mothers...

20 Mothers...

Colonel Gaddafi's speech after his coup (Sep 1, 1969)

Barry was having a hard time, because the man opposite him, an official from the Libyan Department of Commerce, wanted to give him money rather than guns for his classified NATO information. Barry himself would have preferred money, too, but he had been sent to Libya to negotiate for arms.

The negotiations dragged on endlessly. In between, a secret service man joined them, with whom Barry quickly came to an agreement. The IRA would deliver information directly from the NATO Brussels headquarters, albeit only about logistics, but the Libyan agent agreed with Barry that logistics was actually the most important thing in a war.

Then Barry resumed his negotiation with the other official about payment, and it became increasingly clear that the Libyan preferred money simply because some of it could easily be diverted to his Swiss bank account.

Eventually Barry's patience wore thin, so he told the man:

"The Colonel will be back in a moment, so I'll discuss it with him then."

"Which Colonel?" asked the official, and Barry was relieved that the man had no idea that Colonel Gaddafi had been there. He hid his feeling of triumph and said casually:

"Colonel Gaddafi, didn't you know that?"

The Libyan negotiator called in a guard and spoke to the soldier, who obviously told him that Colonel Gaddafi had been there and would come back later, because all of a sudden everything went very quickly. Papers were signed, hands were shaken, and then the wait started again for Barry, Peter, and George, and it was only 3 p.m.

***

Tom enjoyed the helicopter flight and even Martin, who didn't like flying at all, stared spellbound at the sea of sand and rock below them. After a quarter of an hour they landed near a tent with camels tied up next to it, but there were also a few motorcycles and three smaller tents at some distance.

The Colonel invited Tom and Martin into the large tent, which was carpeted. In the back there were cushions on which they sat down. Between them stood an octagonal table covered with an ornate mosaic. Two young men in jellabiyas brought tea, which they poured unerringly into small metal cups from an enormous height.

"You see, Tom, here's tea, just like my mother taught me." Colonel Gaddafi laughed again - the man obviously liked to laugh, Tom thought.

During the helicopter flight, Tom and Martin had changed the cassettes unnoticed, and now they switched their dictaphones on again. Tom asked their host:

"Muammar, what do you actually want from us?"

"First of all, I would like you to come and stay with us for a few weeks. We have a training camp together with the PFLP, where you can learn everything for the partisan fight."

This was something Tom hadn't expected, and he was absolutely sure that none of their group was willing to join a Palestinian training camp, so he politely declined:

"Oh, thanks, we're already training a lot."

The Colonel was curious, so Tom and Martin told him about their training camps on the Euboea beach, and they also mentioned that they made music together. Their host listened attentively. "Funny," thought Tom, "he's a human being, a perfectly normal human being."

Colonel Gaddafi smiled at the German boys as he stated:

"So much sport, martial arts, that's good, we don't do that enough in our army. Thanks for the hint. I need to talk to the Egyptians about that, sport as well as music."