This BBC article would suggest not:
'Tony Blair has defended his treatment of Muammar Gaddafi while in office, saying it was "great" the Libyan leader had stopped sponsoring terrorism.Did anyone other than Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and sundry Oil companies believe or even just persuade themselves that Colonel Gaddafi was in any way a proper business partner? I certainly didn't and that is probably why I am not a multi-millionaire business consultant and/or international peace envoy.
The former PM shook hands with Colonel Gaddafi after talks in Libya in 2004 and re-opened diplomatic links.
On Wednesday a group of countries including the UK, US and France called on the Libyan leader to step down.
Mr Blair said he agreed that change had to be "forced" but added that he had not been "wrong" to restore relations.
...
Mr Cameron has criticised Mr Blair's government for conducting "dodgy deals in the desert".
However, Mr Blair told the BBC: "I don't think we were wrong to make changes in our attitude to Libya when they changed their attitude to us.
"So I think the fact they gave up their chemical and nuclear programme, the fact they stopped sponsoring terrorism and cooperate in the fight against it was great."
Mr Blair, who is now Middle East envoy for "the Quartet", made up of the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States, also said: "But what didn't happen - and people hoped it would but it didn't - was that the external changes in Libyan policy were matched by internal changes.
"And now what you've got over these past few weeks has been totally unacceptable and that's why I think there's no option but to take action and force change there."'
Of course he was not a proper business partner; he was, and is, as mad as a bucket of eels.
ReplyDeleteBut this is the real world, not the one we'd like to live in, and for once (only once!) I might almost back Blair on this one.
Gaddafi, for all his faults, did deliver (1) an end to his WMD programs, as far as we know (2) an end to his sponsorship of the IRA and its like, as far as we know, and (3) effective policing of his Mediterranean coast.
See all those 0,000's of random African refugees, currently in Italy, soon to be in France, not long after that to be found on benefit queues all over the West Midlands of England? Gaddafi stopped that for years.
Blair may be a toad but there is something in what he claims, this time.
Excuse me, I'm just off to wash my mouth out.