The United States wants to ''colonise the globe'', Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi said Thursday during his three-day state visit to Rome.
Speaking to students at La Sapienza University, Gaddafi said the U.S. was not interested in people's freedom and fought against anyone who ''got in its way''.
''The US wanted to kill Gaddafi because he did not want to be subjugated and wanted his country to remain free,'' he said, referring to the US's 1986 airstrikes on Libya.
Addressing terrorism, Gadaffi said terrorist actions were ''to be condemned'', but that ''the reason (behind it) is linked to the colonialism of the Islamic world by countries who profess Christianity''.
Terrorism was a ''reaction'' to this, he said.
Recalling Italy's colonial occupation of Libya - over which Italy and Libya signed a landmark $5 billion dollar friendship accord in August in a bid to address grievances - Gadaffi said Libyans had ''drunk from a bitter cup, with every Libyan family affected by the consequences, with victims either deported or killed''.
''Our aim is to prevent the colonialism of the past from being repeated,'' he said.
Students questioned Gaddafi about immigrant rights in Libya, which has not signed the United Nations Refugee Convention, in the wake of a new Italian policy to intercept and return to the North African country migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean, leaving Libya to deal with asylum requests.
''I agree with the need to respect rights, but we need to know who the political refugees are and how they can be recognised because a lot of information is wrong,'' Gaddafi said.
''Are the millions who march from Africa towards the European Union political refugees? The Africans are starving, not political, they don't practice politics, they don't know about parties or elections,'' he said.
Gaddafi said immigrants headed for Europe to ''chase after resources that they believe have been taken away from them'' by colonialist countries.
Earlier on Thursday Gaddafi attacked the US in an address to the Italian senate, likening the US retaliatory bombing of his quarters in 1986, in which an adopted infant daughter was killed, to al-Qaeda's attacks and claiming the invasion of Iraq had turned the country into ''an arena for al-Qaeda''.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said following the session that the government ''certainly didn't agree on everything'' with the Libyan leader.
Gaddafi is expected back in Italy next month to attend the Group of Eight nations summit in the quake-hit town of L'Aquila.
The Libyan leader will attend the part of the July 8-10 G8 summit devoted to Africa in his capacity as chairman of the 53-nation African Union and may meet United States President Barack Obama, diplomatic sources say.
