Waiting for the Colonel - 18th February 2010
GEORGE NEGUS: Before we got to Libya we'd heard of course
about the Colonel's new
openness, but pretty much this country's still a mystery. This is
Ashraf, our minder from the government. He and I got to know each other
pretty well over the next three days. We couldn't really escape the man
we’d come to interview - he was literally all over the place.
I should tell you what happened to us at the airport when we arrived.
The plan was to film me getting off the plane, going through customs,
immigration and security and all that sort of stuff. But when we hit
customs and immigration a burly guy was pretty unimpressed by the fact
we had our camera rolling and in pretty stern Arabic terms told us to
turn the damn thing off. Before we knew we had been hustled off to one
side and found ourselves surrounded by about 15 guys, some in uniform,
some in plain clothes.
They confiscated our passports - our cameraman, executive producer and
myself - and that’s quite disturbing when you get your
passport taken in this situation. It's also very disturbing to find out
that even though we have an interview with the man himself, Colonel
Gaddafi, they can't tell us which day or what time or where it is going
to happen. So wish us luck.
Anyway, we're here - keep your fingers crossed at what we're going to
achieve. Meanwhile, we'll try to find out what we can about this place
and I'm going to study the Colonel's cross between the Bible and the
Koran - the Green Book - if there can be such a thing as a cross
between the Bible and the Koran - this is his view of the world.
When we met Ashraf's boss, the foreign media minder, as it were, he
kindly provided us with a copy of the Leader's White Book. It's his
plan for how to end the Middle East conflict. I guess all you can say
is, "All the best, Muammar." And I was wondering how I should address
the man.
ASHRAF, FOREIGN MEDIA MINDER: We say Brother Leader.
GEORGE NEGUS: Can a non-Libyan call him Brother Leader?
ASHRAF: You can, yes.
GEORGE NEGUS: If the leader wanted to meet with the people and
make a
speech? That's his podium for making speeches?
Here we learned a little more about Libya and freedom of the press.
We've got all the right pieces of paper, but this local fuzz
isn’t exactly happy about us filming.
GEORGE NEGUS: I don’t think there is any trouble. I
think we will
be right. They check everything though? Will we wait here, Ashraf? I
don't know what that was all about. This is a country run by
people’s committees. I just think we ran into another
committee.
It's interesting that Ashraf said to us yesterday that if we filmed in
the streets without him we would probably be stopped. Except that he's
with us and we still got stopped. It's hard to talk about freedom in
this country without having a smirk on your face, to be honest.
Half an hour's gone and it looks like Ashraf has finally prevailed. He
says the bloke in the uniform's a bit upset because we had filmed him
without his cap on and his boss, apparently, wouldn't like that at all.
Next stop, the souk, in the Medina, Old Tripoli. Another of those
wonderfully labyrinthine bazaars you find in this Arab part of the
world. Love it!
GEORGE NEGUS: Gold back there, silver over here? You know a
lot about
Australia? How are you? Fine. Nice meeting you.
The people are remarkably relaxed and you say friendly, eh? Do they
talk to strangers? Would they chat to me? That guy certainly wanted to
have a chat. Hello. Is this your shop? Thank you, thanks very much. A
cup of coffee I didn’t expect. Very sweet, but great.
So the women would wear this underneath their hijab?
ASHRAF: Yes. That’s one of the oldest mosques around, about
300 years. This place, despite its reputation and its image, is pretty
peaceful, as you can see, tranquil almost. There’s a slowness
about it. They are trying to work out how this old Libyan Islam matches
the new one and with the Colonel not here forever no-one quite knows
what this place will be like after that. We did find out this morning
that the interview is still on. We were told it might be today, it
might be tomorrow and it just might be.
GEORGE NEGUS:Here we go. Getting used to this. Not sure we're
getting better at it,
but we're getting used to it. The Roman ruins here are regarded as
arguably the finest in the world. One of the strangest relationships in
world politics these days has to be that between Gaddafi and the
Italian leader, Silvio Berlusconi, who has his own eccentricities that
the world notices almost as much as Gaddafi, for different reasons.
That strange quirk of historical fate that the Romans, and then the
Italian colonisation, and now Berlusconi and Gaddafi getting on better
with each other than they do with anybody else. History working its
strange maze.
They produced a decent mosaic, the Romans. Fantastic, even with the
damage. Amidst all these marvellous antiquities, this - this Beetle
belongs to the Leader. Would you believe, a revolutionary VW Beetle?
The one Brother Leader tore around Tripoli in before he decided to take
over the entire country. I had one like this. To be perfectly honest,
I’ve never been sure if mosques, churches and synagogues are
part of the solution or part of the problem.
And then it happened - the moment we’d all been waiting for,
but were beginning to think would never happen at all.
GEORGE NEGUS: So, Ashraf, my friend, it's happening?
ASHRAF: Yes.
GEORGE NEGUS: At last! It was worth waiting. So you got the
call?
ASHRAF: Yes, the Leader's office call me and said to come now.
GEORGE NEGUS: OK. Do you know where?
ASHRAF: It should be at the Leader residence.
GEORGE NEGUS:
At the residence, good. Well, thank you for your help so far.
It’s a very, very great privilege. Very rare interview for
Australians to hear from him. Well, as you saw from the interview
itself, when we eventually got it, it was well worth the wait. Plus, we
also got to see something of life here, in Tripoli, and Gaddafi's
Libya.