LONDON: Receiving an interviewer from al-Jazeera television one day in his desert tent, Colonel Muammar Qadhafi talked of world affairs and Libyan politics, then suddenly gestured towards a figure in the distance.

“See that camel-rider over there?” he said. “That camel-rider takes part in the process of decision-making in Libya.”

The interviewer struggled to restrain his laughter but the colonel was serious. Everyone is supposed to have a role in the government of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriyya.

What part the camel-rider played in Libya’s decision to renounce weapons of mass destruction is unknown, but the move has transformed Col Qadhafi from eccentric tyrant to statesman of the moment. The big question is how long the new image will last. Some see the change as prompted by events in Iraq and fear of what the US might do to Libya. Others view it as part of a mellowing process that has been going on almost unnoticed for some time.

The list of Libya’s crimes and misdemeanours since Col Qadhafi seized power as a 27-year-old army officer in 1969 is a long one: Lockerbie, the UTA airliner bombing, the shooting of London police officer Yvonne Fletcher, the Berlin disco bombing, various assassinations, and arms for the Irish paramilitaries, the IRA, to name just a few.

Tragic as these events were, it has always been difficult for enemies to demonize Col Qadhafi in quite the same way that they demonized Saddam Hussein.

Col Qadhafi was the original comedy terrorist, dressing in bizarre costumes, making scenes at Arab summit meetings, driving around Africa in motorcades rather than flying in aeroplanes, and throwing money out of his car window as he went.

Watching his televised performance at an Arab summit, a Jordanian psychiatrist once remarked: “I meet people like him every day in my hospital.”

But mad as his actions might appear to outsiders, they usually had a certain logic if Col Qadhafi’s bedouin roots and the political ideas expounded in his Green Book and the Third Universal Theory — which rejected capitalism and communism — were taken into account.

His point about money-throwing was that most foreign aid is misused or misdirected. By tossing it out of the car window at African crowds he could be more sure it would reach people in need.

“When he came to power he was very young and had a lot of ideas, some of which were pretty barmy,” said the former British ambassador Oliver Miles. “But he has learned by his mistakes — which shows his flexibility and his ability to mature.”

Last week’s announcement on Libyan weapons came as a surprise but it fits a process that began in the mid-1990s, he added. The starting point was Libya’s decision to end its support of the IRA, followed by a deal over the murder of PC Fletcher which led to diplomatic relations with Britain being restored.

Then came agreement on a mechanism for the Lockerbie trial, aided in the background by Nelson Mandela and Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

Subsequent negotiations on compensation for the Lockerbie families were handled on Libya’s behalf by a firm of US lawyers rather than Libyan politicians or diplomats — a sensible and businesslike approach that belied the supposed madness of the Tripoli regime.

Meanwhile, Col Qadhafi himself has been taking more of a back seat in the government of Libya, except where his passion for African affairs is involved. In the old days he would be on the phone almost 24 hours a day, giving instructions to officials, even on the minutest matters. Today, he rarely phones — with the result that many are left wondering what to do.

More changes were heralded by the appointment last June of Shukri Ghanem as secretary of the General People’s Council — in effect, prime minister.

Mr Ghanem, a former deputy secretary-general of Opec, was persuaded to return to Libya to head the economics cs ministry, in line with a decision by Col Qadhafi that ministers should be chosen for their qualifications, not their connections. He was soon promoted (some say his arm had to be twisted) to the premiership — a role which also, according to some sources, involves training Col Qadhafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, for high-level work in government.

In addition, Mr Ghanem is overseeing economic reforms, including the privatization of 300 state companies. This has approval from Col Qadhafi who, despite having once arbitrarily shut down Libya’s entire retail sector, now argues for “people’s capitalism” and has urged Libyans to “benefit intelligently from globalization”.

During the last six months, Saif al-Islam has emerged as the most prominent of the colonel’s sons and daughters, arousing speculation that he may one day take over from his father. Constitutionally, this would be difficult because Libya has no president and the colonel’s title, Leader of the Revolution, can never pass to anyone else. Even so, Saif al-Islam has been given a series of top-level tasks, as well as the freedom to criticize in public.

His most high-profile mission to date was in negotiations with the French over the UTA bombing, though these have still not been resolved, leading some observers to suggest that he took on this difficult brief before he was ready for it.

As president of the Qadhafi International Foundation for Charity Associations, Saif al-Islam was also involved in paying ransoms for hostages held by extremists in the Philippines.

So far, few have taken the foundation’s charitable work seriously, but three months ago it published a surprising report on human rights inside Libya, documenting the ill-treatment of prisoners.

“It was a bombshell, but totally ignored by the outside world,” Mr Miles said.

Since then, the foundation has also exposed a secret list of 12,000 Libyans who are not allowed to travel outside the country. The list is now under review.

Libya is not the first Arab country to embark on major reforms. Elsewhere, in Saudi Arabia and Syria, for example, the process has run into obstacles but in Libya the need is urgent: with sanctions lifted, Libyans will have no one but the colonel to blame for their problems.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.