A senior State Department official said Tuesday he’s sorry for a joking remark he made about Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi that prompted Libya to threaten diplomatic retaliation unless he apologized.
Chief department spokesman P.J. Crowley said he regretted any offense caused by his response to a reporter’s question about Gadhafi’s recent call for a holy war against Switzerland. Libya said last week it might take action against American business interests there if a formal apology was not made…
He made the remark in question on Feb. 26 when he was asked what the U.S. thought of Gadhafi’s appeal for “jihad” against Switzerland after the country banned construction of new mosque minarets. Crowley said he was reminded of Gadhafi’s lengthy speech at the United Nations last September in which the Libyan leader ripped pages from the U.N. Charter.
“I saw that report and it just brought me back to a day in September, one of the more memorable sessions of the U.N. General Assembly that I can recall: lots of words and lots of papers flying all over the place, not necessarily a lot of sense,” he said…
State Department officials said the furor over the comments jeopardized a phone call [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton had been planning to make to Gadhafi this week to discuss a summit of Arab leaders that Libya is hosting on March 27.
Well, we wouldn’t want that.