Senior State Department official apologizes for joking comment about Libya’s Gadhafi

US official apologizes for joke about Gadhafi

WASHINGTON — 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.

“I understand that my personal comments were perceived as a personal attack,” Crowley told reporters. “The comments do not reflect U.S. policy and were not intended to offend. I apologize if they were taken that way. I regret that my comments have become an obstacle to further progress in our bilateral relationship.”

Crowley had already said his offhand remark questioning the “sense” of Gadhafi’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly last year had not been intended as a personal attack. He met with Libya’s ambassador to the U.S. late last week to try to clear the matter up, but he had not apologized until Tuesday.

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.

Within days, the Libyan government summoned the U.S. charge d’affaires in Tripoli, Joan Polaschik, and threatened negative repercussions if the U.S. failed to apologize.

Crowley said Tuesday his comments “should have focused solely on our concern about the term ‘jihad,’ which has since been clarified by the Libyan government.”

After Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton became aware of the situation, Crowley and the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, Jeffrey Feltman, met the Libyan ambassador on Friday to explain that the Obama administration was “strongly committed” to the U.S.-Libyan relationship. But the Libyans insisted on an apology.

Crowley said Clinton had instructed Feltman to travel to Libya next week for broad discussions on bilateral ties.

State Department officials said the furor over the comments jeopardized a phone call Clinton had been planning to make to Gadhafi this week to discuss a summit of Arab leaders that Libya is hosting on March 27. The conversation would be her first with the Libyan leader.