This article quotes Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam as saying that the United States and Libya had signed an accord to reassure American investors their properties in Libya would not be nationalized and that the United States had committed to accepting 1,000 Libyan students for education and training. A spokeswoman at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli says that no such accord has been signed, and that the United States has not committed to accepting a fixed number of Libyan students.
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Oil Wealth Fuels Gaddafi's Drive For Reinvention
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Oil would bring wealth to some, a third friend observed. "The ones who have investments will get richer," he said. "We and Libya will remain the same."
Gaddafi built his state, and steeled his people against its troubles, on the slogan that Libyans were all and equally in it together. He refused the title of president or king for that of Brother Leader of the Revolution, the 1969 military coup in which he seized power.
Libya is taking steps to cushion the shock of the country's planned transformation, said Shalqam, the foreign minister. Infrastructure projects would spread the oil wealth to Libya's 6 million people, he said.
Subsidies on bread and other staples remain. Authorities have increased salaries slightly and promised loans of as much as $5,000 for 200,000 Libyans to help them start businesses.
Gaddafi has blessed the new stock exchange, giving $24,000 in shares in Libyan enterprises to "simple" Libyan families this year, said Ahmed Mohammed Karoub, manager of the Tripoli branch. "We want to cope with the world. We want to cope with catching up," Karoub said.
At the exchange last week, plastic shrouded the legs of new office chairs bought for traders. An employee in a head scarf talked on a cellphone, studying her fingernails on one hand, next to a black computer screen. Trading will begin next year, Karoub said.
Libya has said it wants to retain majority share in some of the first enterprises that it is nominally privatizing, including telephone companies, and may hold positions in other firms.
Libya's big dreams have big problems, Western analysts warn. Libya ran a million-ton shortage of concrete in 2006, according to industry estimates. The country lacks raw material and labor for current construction needs, let alone its ambitious 2009 plan.
Libyan officials have argued publicly over whether to stick to the 2009 goal, the 40th anniversary of Gaddafi's coup, or ease to a less-punishing pace.
Officially, people's committees govern Libya. In fact, true power and affluence still seem to lie with Gaddafi and his family, comrades-in-arms and tribal allies, according to Western diplomats. International rights groups call the government authoritarian and corrupt.
In Gaddafi's home town of Sirte, a mural shows a giant image of the leader looming over oil derricks. "Oil for development in peace, oil for weapons in war," the slogan declares.
At the town's entrance, a banner shows Gaddafi, always ready to pour out his heart to his people through billboards, books and hour-long monologues, lamenting the passing of simpler times: "The olive tree is sacred. The palm tree is sacred. But petroleum has made us lose our reverence."
Staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.
