Kadafi Vows to ‘Carry Struggle All Over World’

TRIPOLI, Libya — Col. Moammar Kadafi vowed Tuesday that “if the United States wants to expand the struggle, we will carry it all over the world.”

“We are fighting for our houses and our homes,” he said, adding that his sole reply to the U.S. Navy’s clashes with Libyan forces in the Gulf of Sidra on Monday and Tuesday “is only to fight.”

“This is not the time for speaking; it is the time for confrontation,” Kadafi declared to a small group of American and European reporters here. “The Gulf of Sidra is ours.” He did not specify what kind of confrontation he had in mind.

An Ecstatic Crowd

The 44-year-old strongman spoke only briefly as he breasted his way through a wildly ecstatic crowd of supporters on the grounds of the annual Libyan trade fair now being held in downtown Tripoli.

In a scene of near-bedlam, thousands of young men pushed and shoved on the pavement between the mainly Communist Bloc pavilions at the fair to get a look at their mercurial and charismatic leader, who responded to the adulation with a broad grin, like an actor taking curtain calls.

Frequently barring his way as he sought to inspect Libyan canned goods and other trade fair displays, the youths clenched their right fists and chanted: “We shall fight to defend our land! We shall defend the Gulf of Sidra with our blood and our spirit! We shall defend our revolution to the bitter end!”

Throughout Kadafi’s progress through the crowds, the young Libyans repeatedly cried in unison, “Libya is not Grenada!” In rhythmic, singsong Arabic, they shouted together: “We do not fear Reagan! We do not fear his army! We are not afraid!”

In contrast to the scene at the fair, people on the streets of Tripoli appeared surprisingly calm, even at the evening rush hour Tuesday.

Aside from the youths at the fair and a demonstration of about a thousand young people who appeared eager to leave school on a fine spring day for an anti-American protest outside the Belgian Embassy, which handles U.S. interests here, there was little public sign of a nation in crisis. Local reports said there was a similar demonstration in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Sidra.

A speaker at the Tripoli rally warned of “suicide squads in every part of Libya” ready for unspecified actions, and a Libyan radio shortwave broadcast was quoted as calling for death to “American spies serving as consultants in the Arab world.”

Little News Put Out

But there was no sign that people here were aroused by the remarks, or even that they had heard them. Since it reported Monday’s initial clash, the government has disseminated little news about the Gulf of Sidra action to Libyan citizens.

Late Monday, the government reported to domestic audiences that U.S. attackers had hit a civilian ship, and the regime claimed to have shot down three U.S. Navy aircraft in the gulf. It also said it allowed a U.S. helicopter to pick up two of the downed pilots before the ship was attacked.

Libya’s claim to have downed American planes has been denied by all official quarters in Washington.

Late Tuesday, in an English-language television newscast viewed by few Libyans, the government broadcast a lengthy statement by its “Committee on International Affairs” (Foreign Ministry) that was also delivered to foreign ambassadors in Tripoli. The statement complained that the Gulf of Sidra is “being turned red (with blood) now by U.S. aggression.” It added that “no foreign power” can have the freedom of the Gulf of Sidra, which “Libya considers its own.”

‘They Are Our Guests’

As to threats, Kadafi himself dismissed at least the idea of any threat against Americans who remain in Libya. “Oh, they are our guests,” he said, waving away a reporter’s question concerning the threat to kill American oil industry consultants.

Americans were barred by U.S. law from remaining in Libya after President Reagan accused Kadafi of aiding the bloody terrorist attacks at Rome and Vienna airports last Dec. 27, in which 16 travelers, including five Americans, suffered fatal injuries. But according to European residents interviewed here Tuesday, an unspecified number of Americans remain in defiance of the ban.

Reports that about 100 Americans left the country Tuesday in the wake of the Gulf of Sidra clashes could not be confirmed. Several American reporters, waiting up to three hours in the Tripoli airport transit lounge for permission to enter the country, saw no identifiable fellow Americans departing.

When reporters sought a longer interview with Kadafi than the running question-and-answer period at the trade fair, an official said, “Not now; you must realize that the brother colonel is very busy.”