TRIPOLI, Oct 26: Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi on Saturday spurned a fresh attempt to prevent him from divorcing his country from the Arab League.

Gaddafi, who has threatened several times to leave the group over its alleged failings to Arabs and notably the Palestinians, met for an hour here with its secretary general, Amr Mussa, but the talks appeared to not go well.

“I have not succeeded in convincing the Libyan party to go back on its decision,” Mussa told reporters after the meeting.

However, Mussa, who flew in from Cairo for the urgent talks, and also met with African Unity Minister Ali Abdul Salam Triki, said that “consultations” were still going on between Libya and the 22-member organization.

Libya informed the league Thursday of its decision to pull out without officially announcing a reason.

However both Mussa and Triki had said the decision was taken to protest against the “Arab position in general,” although the country’s ties with the grouping have been rocky for some time.

A senior league official said Tripoli had grown impatient with a lack of concrete action on the two-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict and US threats to strike Iraq.

It is not the first time that Gaddafi has threatened to pull out of the pan-Arab grouping.

In March, he called on his country’s parliament to examine a Libyan pullout because of the alleged shortcomings of the organisation’s assistance to the Palestinians. That threat prompted an urgent visit by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher.

Libya also considered quitting in 1998 because of the “defeatist” attitude of Arab states towards the UN sanctions imposed on Tripoli over the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing, for which it has now agreed to pay compensation.

At the same time, Gaddafi decided to focus on relations with non-Arab African states, but again chose to stay after a visit by Maher’s predecessor.

In Saturday’s talks, Mussa, quoted by the state JANA, told Gaddafi he was “very embarrassed by the Libyan request to withdraw.—AFP