He had been abducted by an armed group: Hannibal al-Qaddafi, the son of the former Libyan ruler Muammar al-Gaddafi, has apparently been kidnapped in the Lebanon. “You have to leave the country”.
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The former prime minister said he met with Gaddafi “once or twice” because “it was important to bring them in from the cold”.
Tony Blair in front of the foreign affairs committee at the House of Commons where he was giving evidence on United Kingdom foreign policy on Libya.
The 40-year-old former playboy was given sanctuary in Oman in 2012.
ISIS in Libya has between 2,000 and 3,000 fighters and is the only affiliate known to have received support and guidance from the extremist group’s stronghold in Syria and Iraq, U.N. experts have said.
Answering MPs’ questions over NATO’s 2011 intervention in Libya, Tony Blair has claimed his government’s decision to rehabilitate the Muammar Gaddafi regime has kept an extensive chemical weapons arsenal out of hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Blair said he had two or three conversations with Gaddafi calling for him to step down in February 2011.
Blair, prime minister from 1997 to 2007, was instrumental in ending Gadhafi’s worldwide isolation in return for Libya abandoning its nuclear and chemical arms programs.
He added: “I’m not sure it was very easy to do that, but it was worth trying in my view”.
“It’s important to realise that Yvonne Fletcher was murdered in 1984, compensation was secured under my government, Lockerbie happened in 1988, compensation was secured under my government”, he said.
Firstly, he said, the political settlement should be held on the basis of the Libyan Political Agreement negotiated within the framework of the UNSMIL-facilitated political dialogue and he added that notwithstanding the legitimate concerns by some of the parties regarding some elements of the Libyan Political Agreement, there would be no reopening of the text.
But the Labour grandee argued he may have taken a different course of action if he had still been in government, but refused to pass judgement on the decision made by Mr Cameron to intervene. Gaddafi failed to take Blair’s advice and was killed after being discovered hiding in a drain.
Mr Blair suggested if he had still been in Downing Street he would have tried to use his relationship with Gaddafi to persuade him to go, but he could not know whether it would have worked.
The diplomat said a meeting in Rome on Sunday aimed to make that clear to all sides and warn them of possible consequences if they continue to stall political progress.
Mr Blair said that he spoke to David Cameron and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informing them that he was going to reach out to Gaddafi as a private citizen.
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Blair explained Gaddafi’s thinking, saying: “He was someone who a lot of the time they have been so isolated they have not heard sensible arguments and their system does not allow them for people to come to talk to him”.
