COL GADDAFI refuses to step down, playing chess instead – Telegraph

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, an eccentric Russian envoy who has claimed to have spoken to aliens, plays chess with Col Gaddafi in Tripoli  Photo: REUTERS TV

Col Gaddafi refuses to step down, playing chess instead

Col Muammar Gaddafi rebuffed the latest international appeal to step down, instead playing chess with the eccentric Russian multi-millionaire envoy sent to convince him that his end was near.
By Nick Meo, Tripoli5:45PM BST 13 Jun 2011

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the Russian head of the World Chess Federation who has claimed to have once visited an alien spaceship, was the latest, and perhaps strangest, international figure to arrive in Tripoli appealing for Gaddafi to go.

Like all the others, however, Mr Ilyumzhinov’s message appeared to fall on deaf ears. Instead the unlikely pair played chess together as the television cameras rolled. Colonel Gaddafi used the occasion to send out a propaganda message of calm, although ordinary Libyans may have felt slightly queasy at seeing their leader sacrificing pawns on the chessboard.

In the clip broadcast on state television, which appeared to have been shot in a government building somewhere in the capital and not in a bunker, Gaddafi appeared unsure how to play the board game. But, dressed all in black and wearing his trademark sunglasses, he did look surprisingly relaxed after four months of uprising, civil war and a Nato onslaught from the air. He is thought to spend his time constantly on the move, driving around Tripoli, and sleeping in hospitals and religious places that Nato would never dare bomb.
via Col Gaddafi refuses to step down, playing chess instead – Telegraph.

Gadhafi Not About to Leave Libya

Posted on May 31, 2011

AP / Libyan state television via APTN

South African President Jacob Zuma, second from left, with Moammar Gadhafi in Tripoli on Monday.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently joined the chorus of outsiders urging Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to give up, but that suggestion isn’t hitting home with Gadhafi, according to yet another head of state, Jacob Zuma. The South African president returned from a visit to Tripoli with the news that Gadhafi isn’t planning to go anywhere anytime soon.  —KA

The Telegraph:

“(Col Gaddafi) expressed his anger at the Nato bombings, which have claimed the lives of his son and grandchildren and continue to cause a destruction of property and disruption of life,” the statement said.

“He emphasised that he was not prepared to leave his country, despite the difficulties.”

Mr Zuma became the first outsider to see Col Gaddafi in person since May 11, meeting him in his home and seeing the bombed building where the regime says his son Saif al-Arab and three grandchildren were killed in April.

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Elsewhere In The World: Shady A$s Gadhafi Survives NATO Bombing, But Youngest Son Killed In Attack

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi survived a NATO air strike on a Tripoli house that killed his youngest son and three young grandchildren, a government spokesman said on Sunday. Meanwhile, a British official said his government couldn’t confirm reports that the Libyan leader’s son, Saif al-Arab Gadhafi, 29, was killed in the strike.

“We’ve no verification of that at the moment. These are still unconfirmed reports. I’m afraid we don’t know one way or the other,” junior Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt told Sky News when asked about a Libyan government statement that the air strike had killed Gadhafi’s relatives. Burt said command and control centers were “often placed in civilian areas by forces overseas.”

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