The UN has also witnessed the colonel’s eccentricity. At the 2009 General Assembly, he gave a rambling speech more than an hour-and-a-quarter longer than his allocated 10-minute time slot, tearing out and screwing up pages from the UN Charter as he spoke. Gaddafi fitted the bill as an authoritarian ruler who had endured for more years than the vast majority of his citizens could remember. But he was not so widely perceived as a western lackey as other Arab leaders, accused of putting outside interests before the interests of their own people.
