Gaddafi demands nuclear-free Israel

Colonel Gaddafi accused the international community of "double standards" because Israel is allowed to maintain a barely-hidden nuclear capability while Iran comes under massive pressure not to develop its own .

In a wide-ranging interview with Sky News, Col Gaddafi said he was "sorry" about the death of Wpc Yvonne Fletcher, who was shot outside the Libyan Embassy in London in 1984, but insisted he had no idea who was responsible.

Just months after the fierce controversy over the return of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbasset al-Megrahi's return to Libya on compassionate grounds, he described UK-Libyan relations as "very good" - claiming that the links continued on an economic and commercial level throughout his country's years as an international pariah.

And he said that the Nobel Peace Prize for US President Barack Obama was "premature" and inspired by "sycophancy" on the part of the awarding committee.

Col Gaddafi smoothed the path for Libya's return to the international community when he announced in 2003 that he was giving up weapons of mass destruction programmes.

But asked if he would advise Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to do the same, he told Sky: "Iran, up to now, hasn't said it is manufacturing a nuclear weapon: Iran says it is enriching uranium.

"If Iran were to manufacture nuclear weapons, nuclear arms, then all of us, including us, will be against them. But Iran has not said so."

Denouncing the "double standards" which saw Iran treated differently from Israel, he added: "If the Israelis have the nuclear weapons and the nuclear capabilities, then it is the right of the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Saudis to have the same - even the Palestinians should have the same because their counterparts, or their opponents, have nuclear capabilities. Why not?

"Even the state of Palestine, when one day it is established, should have a nuclear capability because the counterpart of such a state, the Israeli state, already has nuclear capabilities. If we don't want this situation, we'll have to disarm the Israelis from their nuclear weapons and capabilities."