Gaddafi's French Shopping Spree Has Critics Unhappy With Sarkozy

"President Sarkozy and I did not discuss these subjects," he said in an interview aired Tuesday on France 2 television. "We are quite close friends."

Signaling their disapproval of the visit, about half the 80 lawmakers invited to a ceremony honoring Gaddafi at the National Assembly on Tuesday boycotted the event. "The National Assembly is not just any place," said Jean-Marc Ayrault, leader of the main opposition Socialist Party. "You don't roll out the red carpet to a dictator within the walls of democracy."

"It's not the color of the carpet" that matters, retorted French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. "It is the fact that we are trying to bring toward us countries which have left terrorism."

Bristling at continued criticism of his rights record, Gaddafi fired back during a speech Tuesday at the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's headquarters, accusing his European hosts of hypocrisy.

"They brought us here like cattle to do hard and dirty work, and then they throw us to live on the outskirts of towns, and when we claim our rights, the police beat us," Gaddafi said in an apparent reference to the suburbs around Paris where many minorities live in low-income public housing.

Gaddafi drew complaints about his visit even before he arrived, saying at a conference in Lisbon last week that it was "normal for the weak to resort to terrorism."

In 2003, Libya formally accepted legal responsibility for the actions of an intelligence agent who had been convicted in a Scottish court of downing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, killing 270 people. The court said the "clear inference" of the evidence was that "the conception, planning and execution of the plot . . . was of Libyan origin."

But during his five-day stay here, Gaddafi also has given fuel to critics who doubt the sincerity of his repentance for past misdeeds, including the downing of a French passenger jet. "Libya has never committed a terrorist act," he said in the television interview, adding, however, that a state cannot be responsible for the acts of all its citizens. He also insisted that there are no rights abuses in Libya.

"We are coming out of a period of national liberation across the world," Gaddafi said. "This struggle, this confrontation is now over." Libya, he said, is "determined to participate in a new world of peace, liberty and cooperation among nations and civilizations."

On Thursday, Gaddafi played tourist, visiting the Louvre in the company of his trademark squad of female bodyguards, dressed in their usual desert fatigues. As the women eyed onlookers, Gaddafi took in such treasures as the Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa.

Researcher Corinne Gavard contributed to this report.