Gadafy's Power in Central Africa Slips Away

Libya has withdrawn a small army unit which has been guarding the government of the Central African Republic in its capital, Bangui, for the past 19 months.

The estimated 300 soldiers slipped away without fanfare in recent days, abandoning Colonel Muammar Gadafy's toehold in the former French colony and further reducing his hope of carving out a sphere of influence in sub-Saharan Africa.

A fuel barter deal with Zimbabwe which he hoped would boost his credentials as a player in central and southern Africa collapsed last month.

The force in Bangui, which manned anti-aircraft weapons and rocked launchers, has helped President Ange-Felix Patasse to repel three attempted coups since it was deployed in May 2001.

Now the task will fall to a regional security force of troops from Gabon, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and Mali.

Having fallen out with the Arab League, Col Gadafy hoped to become a power in Africa by propping up governments in some countries and, allegedly, supporting rebels in others.

The Central African Republic's elected but unpopular president was unable to rely on his own troops to rebuff rebels and gratefully accepted a Libyan guard.

His government has denied reports that it gave Libya a 99-year minerals lease on the landlocked country, impoverished despite an abundance of diamonds, gold and uranium.

Of greater value to Tripoli, apparently, was its sway over a strategically located ally once described as France's "aircraft carrier" in the region, because it was a jumping off point for Chad, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A Libyan army spokesman, Major Abdel Baset al-Lafi, said 81 soldiers had been in Bangui, and there had been no casualties, but sources in the city said the force, which was backed by two MiG jets, was four times that number and that at least two members had been killed in fighting.

In the most recent coup attempt, in October, they repelled rebels who were closing in on the presidential palace.

The garrison, sent under the auspices of the 16-member Community of Sahel and Saharan States, which Libya set up in 1998, was not popular with residents, and Tripoli agreed to its withdrawal under pressure from neighbouring countries, which regarded it with suspicion.

President Patasse will now owe favours to the countries contributing to the regional security force and a band of rebel Congolese fighters.

Last year it seemed that President Robert Mugabe would be beholden to Tripoli when it agreed to supply 70% of Zimbabwe's fuel needs in exchange for beef, sugar and tobacco.

The deal collapsed last month when Zimbabwe was unable to supply the goods, and Mr Mugabe's government has turned to Kuwait and South Africa to ease its crippling fuel shortage.

John Stremlau, director of the Centre for Africa's International Relations in Johannesburg, said: "[Col Gadafy has] decided Africa is going to be his playground now that the Arab world has ignored him.

"But he's not so loony that he gives troops away for free. He's not a charitable organisation."

The colonel has been marginalised by the New Partnership for Africa's Development, which is supposed to reward good governance with western aid, and is reported to have felt compelled to drop his former protege the Liberian president Charles Taylor as a liability.

Nevertheless his apparent renunciation of terrorism has made him no longer the outcast he once was.

Foreign investors are flocking to Tripoli and he has been wooed by African and European governments. Recent visitors include the Italian prime minister and the French foreign minister.

According to documents released this week by the Public Record Office, the British embassy in Tripoli described Colonel Gadafy in 1972 as an intelligent but misguided zealot who sincerely believed he had been called by God.

The confidential briefing note said "strict principles" underpinned his leadership and there was a "crazy logic" in what he did and said.