Gadhafi tries to reassure French of Libya changes

PARIS -- Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi insisted Tuesday his government was never involved in terrorist acts, blaming two bombings of Western passenger jets on "individuals," and he disputed critics who accuse Libya of abusing human rights.

Speaking in a French television interview on the second day of an official visit to France, Gadhafi said Libya wants to take its place in a world marked by peace and cooperation.

The interview with state-run France-2 was conducted in a tent equipped with the latest communications devices and pitched in the elegant garden of the official guest residence.

Protests over his six-day visit, which has clinched contracts worth billions of dollars for French business, started even before Gadhafi arrived. They grew larger Tuesday when he entered the grounds of the National Assembly, considered a symbol of democracy and human rights.

More than half the 80 lawmakers invited to the session at the speaker's residence boycotted the event, at which Gadhafi first evoked his theme of a "new era" for Libya and the world.

The Libyan leader later fed the controversy over his warm official welcome by denying that he and President Nicolas Sarkozy discussed the need for progress in human rights.

"Myself and President Sarkozy, we did not evoke these subjects," Gadhafi said during the TV interview. The French president told journalists Monday that he urged Gadhafi to make progress in human rights.

Sarkozy is the first Western leader to offer an official visit since Gadhafi's falling-out with the West in the 1980s.

Gadhafi has sought to repair relations in recent years, freeing a Palestinian and five Bulgarian medical workers earlier this year after eight years imprisonment and agreeing in 2003 to dismantle Libya's secret nuclear arms program.

Also in 2003, Libya paid compensation to families of victims of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, and agreed to compensate families of the 170 victims of the 1989 bombing of a French UTA passenger jet.

Gadhafi was categorical in his denial of a state role in the passenger jet bombings.

"Libya has never committed a terrorist act," he said in the TV interview. He argued that a state cannot be responsible for each of its citizens, but said an era of conflict is ending.

"We are coming out of a period of national liberation across the world," Gadhafi said. "This struggle, this confrontation is now over. We are in another phase."

Gadhafi also said there are no human rights abuses in Libya, as charged by watchdog groups, and insisted "not a single" political prisoner is held by his government.

Libya is "determined to participate in a new world of peace, liberty and cooperation among nations and civilizations," he said.

The comments didn't calm Gadhafi's critics. Sarkozy's political rivals, including former Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal, held a protest Tuesday evening.

At a parliamentary session, the Socialists left their benches for 20 minutes to protest a refusal to allow them to publicly question the government on the Gadhafi visit.

"You don't roll out the red carpet to a dictator in the (symbol) of democracy," said Socialist group leader Jean-Marc Ayrault.

Government officials have defended the warm welcome for Gadhafi as a way to encourage states that show signs of moving away from terrorism.

"It's not the color of the carpet that we should remember. It is the fact that we are trying to bring toward us countries which have left terrorism," Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.

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Associated Press writer Emmanuel Georges-Picot contributed to this report.