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Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya has flummoxed presidential protocol service with a request that a Bedouin tent be erected in central Paris where he can entertain guests during a visit to France next month.Libyan officials have told their French counterparts that he wants the tent put up in the grounds of the Hôtel Marigny, the 19th-century Parisian state residence used to house important foreign visitors.The protocol service is unsure how to respond, since it is unwilling to displease the volatile ruler but unsure about setting a precedent that could lead to similar demands from other heads of state. “Nothing’s been settled yet,” said a source at President Sarkozy’s Élysée Palace.Le Point, the French magazine, said that advisers to the 65-year-old Libyan leader had told Paris he wanted a tent because he suffered from a phobia brought on by being confined indoors.The Élysée Palace source said that Colonel Gaddafi “made this demand to receive his guests under his tent as is his custom and not to sleep in it.” Colonel Gaddafi, who has ruled the North African country for 38 years, greets visitors in a Bedouin tent in Libya and requested a similar installation when he travelled to Brussels for talks with the Belgian Government in 2004.A black, Saharan-style tent was erected for him in lush parkland by a lake in the grounds of the Val Duchesse château in the suburbs of the Belgian capital. Canvas in the Marigny gardens-which are a stone’s throw from the Élysée and the British Ambassador’s residence-would fuel controversy surrounding a visit designed to illustrate the return of the former pariah to the international mainstream....To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah....
