Libyan Pilgrims To Fly To Mecca, Defy Ban

Moammar Gadhafi says Libya plans to defy the U.N. ban on flights to and from the country and may withdraw from the United Nations, a newspaper reported today.

The New York Times quoted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi as saying in an interview in Tripoli, Libya, that the United Nations had become an instrument of the French, British and American governments.

“Unfortunately, the usefulness of the United Nations is over,” Gadhafi said. “It seemed that for a while the smaller nations had a voice, but the U.N. is now used as a sword against us.”

He called on other smaller nations to form another international body.

Gadhafi said he has told Egypt, Sudan and Saudi Arabia that Libyan planes carrying Muslim pilgrims on the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, would soon enter their airspace. Mecca is the holiest site in Islam.

“If the Libyan planes are shot down or destroyed, if anything happens to these pilgrims, then it will mean that the Prophet’s tomb is under the control of the United States and that Saudi Arabia is not an independent country,” he said.

The United Nations imposed the air embargo and banned the sale or transfer of military parts to Libya in 1992 when it refused to extradite two men wanted in connection with a 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. The bombing killed 279 people.

Libyans have traveled from their nation by land since then.