It was a “very serious mistake” on the part of the West to let Libyan Col. Muammar Qaddafi be killed in 2011, because his death unleashed instability in the North African nation, Italian Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Aug. 16. “It was a very serious mistake to let Qaddafi be killed. He may not have been the champion of democracy, but once he was finished, political instability arrived in Libya and Africa,” said Tajani, interviewed by journalist Alessandro Sallusti at the Versiliana midsummer forum in Marina di Pietrasanta (Lucca) on the north Tuscan coast.
It is known that the Italian government, at that time led by Silvio Berlusconi, made all efforts to prevent a NATO intervention in Libya. Berlusconi had signed a treaty of cooperation and mutual defense with Qaddafi just three years earlier. Eventually, he also joined the NATO intervention. As Qaddafi was killed, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously gloated: “We came, we saw, he died”—punctuated by a cackle.
