VIENNA, Austria (AP) — An Austrian politician said Thursday that one of Moammar Gadhafi's sons told him Libya was ready to sign a peace treaty with Israel once the fighting in his country ended.
David Lasar also said Thursday that Seif al-Islam, Gadhafi's heir apparent before the outbreak of violence, also told him he was ready to act as a middleman to secure the release of an Israel soldier held for more than four years by Hamas, the Palestinian faction controlling Gaza.
Lasar, a Vienna municipal politician with the rightist Freedom Party, was in Libya last month on a trip coordinated between his party and Ayoub Kara, an Israeli deputy minister.
Lasar is Jewish, while Kara is a Druse, and both occasionally assume positions and take on missions that are unusual for their government or party.
Lasar told The Associated Press that his conversation with Seif was "no longer than five or six minutes" after he was picked up by from his Tripolis hotel in the middle of the night by men "who told me they would bring me to an interlocutor."
He said Seif told him "he finds peace with Israel very important for the future" and would discuss the issue of signing a peace treaty with the Jewish state with his inner circle once NATO ended the air campaign against government forces.
Seif also said he considered it an "important humanitarian mission" to lobby for the release of Gilad Schalit, the Israel army sergeant held by Hamas since his capture in June 2006, said Lasar.
Lasar commented after Kara told Israel radio that the Austrian politician told him Gadhafi was ready to begin talks with Israel and even expressed willingness to sign a peace agreement with the country, provided that NATO end its strikes. Kara said he had insisted on receiving the pledges in writing from Gadhafi, so that he could present them to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but this never happened.
Gadhafi was one of the most vehement critics of Egypt in the Islamic world for Cairo's decision to sign the 1978 Camp David accords establishing peace with Israel
The ties between Kara and the Freedom Party are controversial among Jews both in Israel and Austria. After he met in December Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of Austria's Jewish community, Ariel Muzicant, said that Kara had "stabbed Austrian Jews in the back."
While some of its supporters are anti-Semitic, the Freedom Party has publicly embraced Israel even as it exploits anti-Islamic sentiment in Austria for political gain. The most recent polls position it a close second to the Socialists, which shares a government coalition with the centrist People's Party.
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