New Democracy!

Now with 80% less democracy for that great fresh taste.

THE normalisation of US-Libya relations is a natural marriage of a US administration desperate for friends and oil in the Middle East and a government that needs to open its economy to the outside world, observers say.

The Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, announced on Monday that the US was restoring full diplomatic relations with Libya and removing it from the list of countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism.

Dr Rice called the moves "tangible results that flow from the historic decisions taken by Libya's leadership in 2003 to renounce terrorism and to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programs".

Observers called the announcement proof that promotion of democracy is no longer a top priority of the Bush Administration, which is grappling to hold Iraq together and has turned its attention towards building alliances against a hostile Iran.

"The timing can be explained by a need for the United States to have a positive breakthrough in the Middle East," said Mohamed Sayed Said, a political analyst at the Egyptian government-run al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. "With Libya, Washington gets a regime that has converted itself from radicalism to accommodation." It was self-evident that there was a retreat from democracy and that the US was aligning itself with undemocratic regimes, he said.

Libya has been ruled by Muammar Gaddafi since he seized power in 1969. Analysts expressed no surprise about the rapprochement, saying it was inevitable since Colonel Gaddafi gave up Libya's nuclear weapons program three years ago.

The US lifted its economic embargo against Libya in 2004, and since then, at least six US oil companies have resumed drilling and exploration that had been suspended in 1986. Libya possesses the world's eighth-largest oil reserves, but the US embargo had driven down production by keeping new equipment and technology out of the country.

Libya is still regularly listed by human rights groups as having one of the world's most repressive governments. A survey by Freedom House, a US-based organisation that promotes democracy worldwide, placed Libya in the bottom five countries in terms of the free flow of information.

SMH

These would be the WMD he got from Pakistan, America's latest major non Nato ally. So for rolling over and letting Uncle Sam scratch his belly Gaddafi joins Islam "the boiler" Karimov as a dictator the US just can't do without in its war on tyranny. Eastasia? Eastasia has always been our ally...