Italy is considering the possibility of building a highway across Libya as compensation for its bloody colonial rule of the country. Premier Silvio Berlusconi said on Monday night that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi sees an east-west motorway across the top of the country as the price for definitively closing the ongoing question of reparations.
"Colonel Gaddafi wants a gesture that marks a definitive accord with compensation to Libya for the period of colonial occupation," he said. "We have made several offers, for example, the construction of hospitals, but Gaddafi wants a coastal road linking Egypt with Tunisia," he added.
The government is considering this possibility, Berlusconi said, because "Libya feels it cannot overcome a
negative attitude towards us without this gesture of reparation and conciliation". Italy occupied and ruled Libya between 1911 and 1943, a time when Fascist authorities carried out a bloody 'pacification' of the country in which many Libyans died.
A statement released by the Libyan government on Monday, in which it repeated the request for compensation, the number of victims of colonial rule was put at 700,000. According to Italian newspapers, the motorway demanded by Gaddafi would cost at least 3 billion euros. This is much higher than the 60 million euros that Berlusconi reportedly hinted Italy might pay for a road in 2002.
Last week Gaddafi said Libyans' simmering anger over Italy's colonial rule had been behind rioting last month in the eastern city of Benghazi, where a mob attacked the Italian consulate.
Some 14 protestors are thought to have been killed by Libyan police in the incident.
It had initially seemed that the rioting was sparked by Italy's former reforms minister, Roberto Calderoli, who angered Muslims in many countries by displaying a T-shirt bearing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.
Gaddafi's son, Saadi, appeared to confirm this in an interview with Italian state broadcaster RAI on Monday.
