Word: libyan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Then it was revealed that over the summer the Administration devised and acted upon a secret plan to deceive the American media--by planting an apocryphal story in The Wall Street Journal--so as to convince Libyan military officers that an American invasion of their country was imminent and incite them to depose Col. Khadaffy. A laudable aspiration, perhaps, but one which the Administration sought to achieve through manipulative means wholly in contradiction with fundamental American values about honesty and forthrightness in government. Making matters more repulsive was a report a few weeks later which showed that the Administration doctored...
...important Pacific power last week decided to do something about the growing Libyan presence. In an unusually blunt announcement, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke ordered that the Libyan embassy, or People's Bureau, in Canberra be closed. There was "compelling and incontrovertible evidence," said Hawke, that the embassy was "serving to facilitate Libya's destabilizing activities." Hawke was especially concerned about Libyan attempts to stir up trouble among Australia's 170,000 aborigines. Gaddafi last month reportedly offered funds to help establish a separate aboriginal nation, a charge he has since denied. Said Hawke: "Libya's record of subversion...
Libya's South Pacific activities are extensive. In New Caledonia, indigenous Melanesians, who are known as Kanaks, have received Libyan weapons, which could be used in their struggle against the French colonial administration. Officials in Papua New Guinea complain that Gaddafi is wooing rebels along that country's Indonesian border with promises of arms and financial assistance. In Vanuatu last month, two Libyan agents were discovered searching for space to set up a People's Bureau in Port-Vila, the capital, apparently without the permission of Prime Minister Walter Lini's government. Not that Lini dislikes Libya. Indeed, his Vanua...
...plausible explanation in terms of geography or legitimate national interest," a suspicious Hawke said last week. One possible explanation is that Gaddafi simply wants to irritate the U.S. and France, his chief Western enemies, and at the same time deflect attention from domestic economic troubles and the defeat of Libyan troops in the African country of Chad. Some Western observers, however, believe a Libyan presence in | the Pacific may foreshadow a larger political offensive by its ally, the Soviet Union. In recent months Moscow has been enlarging its Pacific fleet and trying to negotiate fishing agreements with a number...
Vanuatu's Lini, one of the few leaders in the region who defend Libya, argues that Gaddafi merely wants to send economic aid to the impoverished island states and help the Kanak independence movement in New Caledonia, a cause endorsed even by Australia. Nonetheless, Hawke plans to make the Libyan threat a topic of discussion at this weekend's meeting of the 13-nation South Pacific Forum, and has dispatched a representative to brief member governments on the need to send Gaddafi's men packing...