Hello and Welcome: Frost Takes the Desert Road for an Audience With The Leader

It was 30 years ago that Muammar Gadafy arrived at a remote town deep in the Sahara desert to launch "the greatest event in the history of the world"- the Jamahiriya - the unique "state of the masses" he designed to bring democracy directly to the heart of the people. Yesterday the Libyan leader was back in Sebha, but this time it was a very different approach. Col Gadafy was joined by consultants from Washington, the guru for Tony Blair's third way philosophy and the camera of Sir David Frost for an extraordinary televised "conversation" about how his country will face the future in a changing world.

"Hello and welcome," Sir David drawled as his guests settled into their green leather armchairs.

And the man known to his five million countrymen simply as "the leader" declared, "The past is over."

In response to a question about media freedoms and human rights, he said: "Today we live in an age of globalisation. Libya cannot stand against the tide."

The colonel, in his trademark tribal robes and felt cap, needed no introduction: his picture is plastered all over Sebha, where the Jamihiriya was declared on March 2, 1977. Vigilant bodyguards scanned the scene nervously .

Sir David's line-up for the anniversary wouldn't have shamed Newsnight, let alone Al-Jazeera, his new day job. On the left was Anthony Giddens, formerly of the London School of Economics and now the House of Lords. Flanking him was Benjamin Barber, author of the bestselling Jihad vs McWorld. It was the McWorld part that set the tone.

Gadafy's two-hour session with the talking heads in a desert studio was partly an exercise in rebranding, partly a genuine - if limited - discussion about how a pariah state that has come in from the cold can make economic and perhaps political reforms that could transform it beyond recognition.

For the moment though, western-style democracy is clearly not on the cards. "In Libya there is no dictatorship, no injustice, there is no conflict over power," Gadafy insisted.

"People feel they have power in their hands. In the West power is money, not democracy. Is it democracy when half the people don't want you to remain president?"

The transition from a "troubled past" was described in a short, slick film prepared by Monitor Group, the Massachusets-based consultancy helping the country plan its future. "Libya has experienced military aggression and economic sanctions." The film showed Gadafy, a young army officer when he seized power in 1969, smiling children and a very brief clip of the wreckage of Pan Am 103, bombed over Lockerbie in 1988.

" Libya in 2007 is a different place," went the voice-over. "It has taken responsibility for past actions. Its new role as ally in the global war on terror has been applauded in the West."

Gadafy, studying his own Green Book intently as the film was screened, was less direct, but talked of "realism and pragmatism" - the approach which guided his decision to surrender Libya's weapons of mass destruction after the war in Iraq in 2003 in a deal negotiated with the CIA and Britain's MI6.

Western leaders, with Tony Blair at the front, have been beating a path to his door ever since, though the colonel has not yet ventured beyond Brussels. Intellectuals like Lord Giddens have followed.

Other recent visitors include Francis Fukuyama, whose seminal work End of History assumed the triumph of liberal democracy, though it was once hard to imagine it would reach Libya too.

Foreign energy companies are now a huge presence, bidding to exploit the country's vast oil and gas reserves and finance urgent modernisation work that could not be done under UN sanctions imposed to force the handover of the Lockerbie suspects.

Pioneering work has been done by Seif al-Islam, Gadafy's son, LSE graduate student and moderniser who has been probing the limits of what is possible in the Jamahiriya through the Gadafy Foundation for Development.

Seif al-Islam has no other official position, but is a strong supporter of the new national economic strategy, overseen by a professor from Harvard Business School. He is also behind limited plans to liberalise the stultifying state media. It is widely assumed that he must be operating with his father's agreement.

Still, talk of succession is not welcome. "I don't know why westerners are so interested in this question," said Tripoli businesswoman Ibtisam bin Amer. "We are rejoining the world."

In Sebha, at least, the colonel was in fine form, though his views on democracy got a polite but robust response from the author of the forthcoming Over to You Gordon - How Labour can Win Again, and a expert on Britain's own battle between modernisers and those who are reluctant to embrace change.

"If the leader will forgive me I think it is wrong to say that you can have a democratic society without a strong element of representation," ventured Lord Giddens. Gadafy pronounced the debate "helpful," but showed that the old firebrand is still burning, 30 years on.

"Libya adopted direct popular democracy because it had the freedom to choose a system that fits," he declared defiantly. "We fought, we had sanctions, we had an embargo. We did not obey."

Backstory

Muammar Gadafy, a disciple of Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser, overthrew Libya's monarchy in 1969, codified his ideas in the Green Book and declared the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya or "state of the masses" in March 1977.

People's congresses were set up in what he describes as grassroots democracy but which masks sclerotic decision-making, an obscure legislative process and massive subsidies to state employees.

The national economic strategy is to boost oil and gas revenues and diversify into tourism and construction.

Human rights have improved and some political exiles have returned home but the press is still controlled by the state despite free access to the internet and satellite TV.

Gadafy reaped rewards after ending the Lockerbie affair and dropping support for the IRA and other terrorist groups.

Libya is now seen as a valued ally of the west, a bulwark against Islamist extremism and a prime destination for foreign investment.