Gaddafi humiliates the French, but is stung by Egypt
Over the past four months he had signed a treaty of friendship with Morocco and sought to improve relations with West Germany and France. But Libya's mercurial strongman, Muammar Gaddafi, has disappointed Western leaders who may have hoped that he had turned his hand from duplicity to diplomacy. Last week repercussions of his latest antics resounded around the world:
> In Chad, at least 1,000 Libyan troops remained in the African country, despite Gaddafi's agreement with French President Francois Mitterrand, made in September, to remove them. As a result, French troops are on stand-by in neighboring Central African Republic and in Gabon.
> In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak announced one of the year's most bizarre plots: he had succeeded in embarrassing Gaddafi by ensnarling the Libyan dictator in one of his own adventures. The previous day, the Tripoli government radio had gleefully announced that a Libyan "suicide squad" had assassinated former Libyan Prime Minister Abdel Hamid Bakkush in Cairo. In fact, the assassins' plot had been uncovered by Egyptian authorities before the hitmen reached their intended victim. Bakkush was roughed up by the Egyptians, smeared with human blood and photographed to look as if he had been murdered. The pictures were sent to Gaddafi, who immediately took credit for the apparent crime. According to Mubarak, the four gunmen—two of whom were English—revealed details of a Libyan hit list. On it were such leaders as Mitterrand, West Germany's Helmut Kohl, Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, Britain's Margaret Thatcher and India's late Indira Gandhi.
> In Washington, French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson struggled to relieve his country's embarrassment over the Chad affair. Said he: "Gaddafi is a fact. He is the leader of Libya, an independent country. To ignore him would be a political mistake." France has resumed negotiations with Libya over the troop withdrawal, an action opposed by Washington on the ground that there is no point in bargaining with one of the chief instigators of international terrorism. But Cheysson insisted: "What would the U.S. have us do? Enter into war with Libya? The only reasonable policy is the one we have said." In a soothing gesture, Secretary of " State George Shultz went for predinner drinks at the French embassy. He skipped | the meal.
> In Paris, Mitterrand's government was trying to cope with the outraged domestic reaction to the Chad fiasco. Said former Prime Minister Maurice Couve de Murville: "France has suffered one of its most serious humiliations in a long time." Writing in Liberation, a leftist newspaper, the respected commentator Serge July observed: "The worst in this kind of affair is that everyone expects Mitterrand to be duped, and in the end he is duped. You can't believe your eyes. One asks oneself if there is not something suicidal in Mitterrand's behavior." The barrage of criticism did little to improve Mitterrand's sagging popularity ratings, which had already dropped to 26%, the lowest for any French President since the Fifth Republic was founded in 1958.*