Emma Brockes Meets Colonel Gadafy's Son

People are staring. Saif al-Islam Gadafy, son of the colonel, is posing for photographs in the lobby of a stuffy London hotel. He looks like a playboy prince: wholemeal loafers, ultra-white teeth, immaculate tailoring. He could be launching a range of leisure wear or a new aftershave, except that there is something vaguely imperial about his carriage. And when he smiles, it is pure politician.

The day before, my request to interview Gadafy is met with an unexpected condition. He might be persuaded to see me, an aide says, if I agree to a preliminary visit to his hotel in Park Lane and submit to some questioning. It is an odd request, and a colleague and I go expecting to be stood up.

The lobby is stuffed with grandfather clocks and terrible oil paintings, and there are staff dressed in waistcoats who snort derisively when asked if there is a "Mr Gadafy" on their books. Two paces inside the door and we are stopped by a man who asks if we are the girls he has sent for from the agency. After a moment's confusion, it becomes clear that he has mistaken us for escorts.

The Gadafy aide, however, is waiting for us, a Middle-Eastern man with a moustache and a lot of nervous eye-movement. "What questions will you ask?" he says, glancing feverishly around the room. I will ask about Gadafy's life, I say. He leans over a notebook and in painstaking script writes: "Life." He will relay this to Gadafy, he says, and get back to me.

Life, apparently, is on the yes list, for at the same venue the following evening, Saif al-Islam Gadafy is produced with a flourish. He has just won an apology from the Sunday Telegraph for calling him an "untrustworthy maverick". He smiles abruptly, and with force. "They were under pressure to settle," he says, and glides up the stairs, followed at a short distance by his hand-wringing assistant.

At the age of 30, this is Gadafy's first trip to Britain, a fact that annoys him considerably. He has suffered great personal indignity at the hands of the west, he says. A child at the time of the bombing of Tripoli, a teenager through Libya's worst years of sanctions, the injustice Gadafy feels most keenly is his rejection from the west's Ivy League universities. "Yes, I hated them for that," he says. "The west made it very difficult for me to study. I was refused permission by France and Canada, Switzerland, Australia, almost all western countries, for nothing. Just because I am the son of Colonel Gadafy. It's a kind of discrimination. I'm a friendly person, but I cannot forget being treated like that. Those countries were bad to me, and I will remember."

This is the longest speech I get out of him in 40 minutes. Gadafy is the perfect politician's son, polite and unforthcoming. He studied architecture in Libya and is responsible for "many monuments and sports centres and libraries". He is close to his family. He likes "many" sports - it takes some painful prodding to commit him to "diving, tennis and football". He likes warm weather and the German philosophers. He wants to do a doctorate in politics at the London School of Economics. After that he might become a professor.

"I'd rather write books about politics than practise them," he says. "To write a book or a paper about international affairs is better than to shout in a parliament. More useful."

Politics is part of his life. "I don't practise it, but I grew up surrounded by it. It's in my blood." It is the childhood he had in the Gadafy household of the 1980s that most boggles the mind. As the eldest son of his father's second marriage (he has five siblings, among them a doctor, a lawyer and a footballer), I wonder if Gadafy junior was spoilt. "No. Not spoilt." When did he realise his father was important? "I can't remember. Long time ago." Did he grow up in a palace? "Actually, we have a very modest house, plus tent. Yeah. We are different to other royal families, because Libya is very revolutionary and very socialist and very to the left. The whole system is in favour of equality and maturity and typical socialist things."

This is how Gadafy characterises his father's regime. "Dictator" is not a word he tolerates. Asked to describe Libyan society, he compares it to Switzerland. "The Libyans are first of all very serious, unlike the Lebanese and so on. We are very conservative. We don't laugh too much. Except me." He flashes the neon smile. "Also, we are a very closed society. Like the Swiss. But friendly. It's not easy to penetrate the society, but if you get to know a Libyan, then you can say you have a good friend."

Gadafy believes Libya's relationship with the west is improving."Yes, we were in danger," he says. "We had a hard time, because of our position, my father, and we faced a lot of battles with different parties and incurred a lot of liabilities. We faced superpowers and even our neighbours. Confrontation in the north and the south, the east and the west. It wasn't easy for us." But, he says, "it has progressed. It's going towards the right direction. All the western countries and Libya co-operate together. Even the Canadians and Americans are willing to start a new relationship. We are going to reach a very good stage. We are building new ties."

The air between Libya and the west has been cleared in part by the conviction of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bomb. Gadafy is supportive of the verdict in so far as it has enabled a detente with the west."Before the trial, there were no relations. There was a Dutch embassy in Tripoli, but no Libyan embassy in the Hague. Now we have diplomatic relations with the British and France and the United States." Latterly, he has been able to study in Austria and now, potentially, in London.

With fluent diplomacy, Gadafy says that his British political education is too primitive to offer a critique of Tony Blair. "He is young," he says. "He is a reformer." His thoughts on the Middle East are more advanced. Apart from his father, Gadafy's political hero is Yasser Arafat. "He came to our house many times when I was growing up. He is very friendly. The fight is imbalanced. They are very weak. Arafat is under siege. But with patience, I'm sure they are going to reach settlement, like me and the Telegraph." Gadafy has no beef with individual Israelis, he says, just as he does not hold individual westerners responsible for the actions of their governments. But of Israel as a nation, he says: "They are foreigners - they came from Russia and Germany and Poland to make an artificial state based on separation and discrimination and a class system, and we aren't going to accept a state like this. No way."

Gadafy has put aside one day for sightseeing in London. He intends to visit friends and landmarks. He says that if he comes here to study, he will be a modest student. He reminds me that he is a Muslim and doesn't drink. Besides, he says, his enjoyment of the west is always tempered by the certainty that his movements are being monitored. "It is all part of the game." He smiles briskly and heads for the lifts with a little swagger.