TRIPOLI, Libya — The United States formally reopened its embassy in Libya on Thursday as the returning ambassador said that his government was cautiously optimistic about the country’s future and already trying to help American companies exploit business opportunities here.
Speaking to reporters after the ceremonial flag-raising over a makeshift post that was once his residence, Ambassador Gene A. Cretz said that about two weeks ago — roughly a week after forces loyal to the deposed Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, were driven out of Tripoli — he participated in a State Department conference call with about 150 American companies hoping to do business with Libya.
“We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources, but even in Qaddafi’s time they were starting from A to Z in terms of building infrastructure and other things” after the country had begun opening up to the West six years ago, he said. “If we can get American companies here on a fairly big scale, which we will try to do everything we can to do that, then this will redound to improve the situation in the United States with respect to our own jobs.”
His remarks were a rare nod to the tacit economic stakes in the Libyan conflict for the United States and other Western countries, not only because of Libya’s oil resources but also because of the goods and services those resources enable it to purchase.
Oil was never the “predominant reason” for the American intervention, Mr. Cretz said, but his comments — which came at a moment when the fighters who chased out Colonel Qaddafi have not yet caught him or fully vanquished his forces — underlined the American eagerness for a cut of any potential profits.
Elsewhere on Thursday, Tripoli’s new leaders continued to inch forward toward their twin goals of subduing the old government and building a new one. Officials of neighboring Tunisia said Thursday that on the previous night their security forces had arrested the last of Colonel Qaddafi’s figurehead prime ministers, Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi, for crossing its border illegally while fleeing Libya. A Tunisian court immediately sentenced him to six months in prison for illegal entry, the government said.
The Libyan provisional government said that anti-Qaddafi fighters continued to battle loyalist forces in the area around Colonel Qaddafi’s southern stronghold and onetime childhood home of Sabha. Anti-Qaddafi fighters also remained locked in standoffs with Qaddafi forces in his other two remaining bastions, Surt on the Mediterranean coast and Bani Walid in the desert south of Tripoli.
Libya’s provisional government has already said it is eager to welcome Western businesses, although both Mr. Cretz and the Libyan leaders acknowledged that addressing the rampant corruption of the Qaddafi era remains a potential hurdle.
In a news conference last week, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, chairman of Libya’s Transitional National Council — the civilian leadership of the former rebels — said the new government would even give its Western backers some “priority” in access to Libyan business.
There had been no promises to its Western supporters, he said, “But as a faithful Muslim people we will appreciate these efforts and they will have priority within a framework of transparency.”
But he also acknowledged that the “framework of transparency” could be a significant qualification, at least as far as the many contracts with Western companies signed under the Qaddafi government. While the provisional government had respected “all legitimate contracts” from the Qaddafi period, it was undertaking a systematic review “for whatever financial corruption may have tainted them.”
Cleaning up the former government’s habitual corruption was all the United States hoped for, Mr. Cretz said, but he acknowledged it was a tall order. “The stench of corruption affected everything that the Qaddafi regime did with respect to commercial entities,” he said. “The bureaucracy was rife with it because that was the way it was done, and the family was at the top. Every deal involved a payoff to the Qaddafi family or a crony.”
Still, Libya’s new leaders, he said, appeared “willing to accede to international standards of transparency and accountability, and I think that is a good thing.”
In the final years of the Qaddafi government, Mr. Cretz wrote vividly of its rampant corruption in diplomatic cables released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, including a 2009 dispatch titled “Al-Qadhafi: The Philosopher-King Keeps His Hand In.” After the release of those cables late last year, he said Thursday, he had been “physically threatened” and “I had to leave immediately.”
The United States abandoned its embassy when the uprising began in February, and on May 1, the empty building was ransacked by Qaddafi forces, ostensibly in retaliation for the death of Colonel Qaddafi’s son, Seif al-Arab, in a NATO bombing.
Reviewing the situation he found on his return, Mr. Cretz cited several factors for concern, including the challenge of disarming the newly armed populace and many autonomous militias; the many fissures within the anti-Qaddafi forces along regional or other lines; and the potential for militant or at least anti-Western Islamists to take control.
But so far, he said, the Islamists were emphasizing moderation, democracy and pluralism, and the Libyan leaders deserved a chance to overcome their differences. “Don’t underestimate the Libyan people because they have shown for the last six months what a truly heroic people is,” he said.
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
22 September 2011
@ The New York Times