{"id":475,"date":"2005-01-01T22:59:46","date_gmt":"2005-01-02T04:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=475"},"modified":"2005-01-01T23:00:10","modified_gmt":"2005-01-02T05:00:10","slug":"gadhafi-denies-grooming-son-to-succeed-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=475","title":{"rendered":"Gadhafi Denies Grooming Son to Succeed Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’d advise all to take this<\/a> with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi played down speculation that he is grooming his son to replace him, saying Friday that succession by family members is not part of his North African republic’s political makeup.<\/p>\n

“There is no succession in the (Libyan) republic’s regime,” the 61-year-old Gadhafi said when asked during an interview on the Arab Al-Jazeera network whether his son, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, will succeed him.<\/p>\n

Since staging a 1969 coup, the elder Gadhafi has run Libya with an iron fist, outlawing all forms of opposition under the guise of handing power to his country’s 5 million people.<\/p>\n

But in recent years, speculation has mounted that Gadhafi has been providing his 32-year-old son with highly visible duties, such as negotiating the release of hostages, in a bid to prepare him for leadership.<\/p>\n

While Seif al-Islam, one of Gadhafi’s eight children from two wives, has previously rejected talk of any future succession, his father has rarely gone public to play down the notion.<\/p>\n

Gadhafi also renewed his criticism of what he described as a lack of Arab unity in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

“The relationship between Libya and Italy is one thousand times better than its relations with Egypt, its sister,” he said. “Relations between Tunisia and Germany are a thousand times better than its (Tunisia’s) relations with Libya.”<\/p>\n

But when asked about the latest diplomatic rift between his country and oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Gadhafi responded by saying “there is no problems at all between the two countries.”<\/p>\n

Last week, Saudi Arabia announced the withdrawal of its ambassador to Libya and asked the Libyan ambassador to leave the kingdom in response to U.S. claims that Libya had plotted to assassinate Saudi de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah. Libya has dismissed the charges as false.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I find it interesting that Gadhafi is so happy to publicly rip relations with his Mideastern brethren. As I’ve said before<\/a>, I believe that he sees our war against Islamist terror as an opportunity to greatly increase his position in the Arab world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’d advise all to take this with a grain of salt. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi played down speculation that he is grooming his son to replace him, saying Friday that succession by family members is not part of his North African republic’s political makeup. “There is no succession in the (Libyan) republic’s regime,” the 61-year-old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-general","category-middle-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}