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Condoleezza Rice: My creepy dinner with Gaddafi

Charlotte McDonald-Gibson
Friday 04 November 2011 01:00 GMT
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Reliving one of her more excruciating moments as America's top diplomat, Condoleezza Rice has described how she had to endure a "creepy" encounter with the late Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi.

In her new memoir, the former US Secretary of State recounts how she visited Libya soon after Gaddafi's rapprochement with the West.

After dinner, he told Ms Rice he had a video he wanted to show her.

"It was quite an innocent collection of photos of me with world leaders set to the music of a song called 'Black Flower in the White House' written for me by a Libyan composer," she writes. Talking to Piers Morgan on his CNN show, she admitted she found the whole encounter "weird and a bit creepy". But she added: "At least it wasn't raunchy."

She said she was aware of Gaddafi's fixation on her, but "it was my job to go there, do a little bit of diplomatic business, and get out... I am just glad that it all came out all right".

When rebels seeking to oust Gaddafi raided his compound in Tripoli in August, they found a book of photos of the dictator with world leaders including Ms Rice.

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