After Gaddafi’s wild side,his mild side

“It is in our interest for Libya to have good relations with the US,” Gaddafi said through an interpreter,speaking Arabic in a low monotone that barely registered above a whisper.

There was no mention of prosecuting those responsible for the “mass murder” in Iraq,as he had demanded at the General Assembly. No call for an investigation of the assassinations of John F Kennedy and the Martin Luther King Jr No pawing through a pile of scrawled notes or waving of the UN charter.

If the standing-room-only crowd had turned up for another display of geopolitical performance arts,they were sorely disappointed.

“Yesterday was theater; today was a give-and-take,” said the council’s president,Richard N Haass,who looked pleasantly surprised to have presided over a seminar rather than a circus. “You might disagree with him,but there is no question it was a legitimate debate.”

After 40 years as Leader and Guide of the Revolution,Gaddafi has worked to shed his outlaw status,relinquishing his nuclear and chemical-weapons programmes,becoming chairman of the African Union and seeking foreign investment.

In his first appearance at the UN,he followed a tradition of grandstanding,from Nikita Khrushchev,who brandished his shoe,to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez,who in 2006 said he smelled sulfur on the rostrum the day after President George W Bush spoke. But with an influential American audience and the cameras turned off,the softer strongman came out.