Lunch With the FT: 52 Classic Interviews (28 page)

She describes the memorial – 16 slanting bronze ‘standards’ in formation that could be troops on parade, or Maori performing a haka, or a
cricketer leaning forward to play a defensive stroke – as a work of art: ‘It is a beautiful and creative design. The patterns on each standard are highly symbolic of the people who make up New Zealand, the literature, the birds, the shoreline, the forest. It’s a statement about New Zealand today.’

When Clark became prime minister in 1999 she also took on the portfolio of minister of arts, culture and heritage. She believes these are the areas that forge New Zealand’s identity and can help it get noticed on the world stage. ‘We are a country of four million people. We are geographically remote, so we have to find ways of saying “Look at me” as a country.’ Not a natural show-off, she laughs, almost apologetically. But this philosophy is one of the reasons her government has increased funding to creative industries such as film. ‘Film is an iconic industry and if your country is producing great movies then that has a cachet about it.
The Lord of the Rings
has given New Zealand fantastic publicity in the past seven or eight years, and it was followed by
King Kong
and
The Chronicles of Narnia
, also made by New Zealanders.

‘The other way to get international attention is to host very large events, such as the America’s Cup, and then leverage off that. We’re now looked on as world-leading yacht designers, and builders of super yachts and marine technology. The film industry also enables you to showcase your technology and digital solutions, so New Zealand becomes a place where you’d be interested in buying very sophisticated goods. In other words, we’re trying to shake that chocolate-box image of 1950s sheep and mountains.’

By now our tea has been poured from the inevitably rose-speckled teapot into our china cups. I am reminded of David Lange, a previous Labour prime minister, who in 1988 famously announced it was time for the country to have ‘a cup of tea’, meaning a pause in the free-market frenzy of reforms unleashed by his finance minister, Roger Douglas. At that stage Clark had been housing minister, struggling to keep state houses (provided at affordable rents for people on low incomes) from being sold off or rented out at market rates. Now, as prime minister, she is able to introduce a range of left-leaning policies, with social justice at its core. ‘I had to bring our Labour party back from the lurch to the right.’ She says her administration is more consistent with the first Labour government, elected in 1935 and renowned for creating the
country’s welfare state and providing free healthcare and a universal pension.

However, some ideas pioneered in New Zealand in the 1980s have migrated to the UK – such as giving the Bank of England the independence to set interest rates and so keep inflation under control. And the country continues to be a social laboratory for Britain. The call by the Conservative leader David Cameron for a points-based system to ensure immigrants have the skills the country needs mirrors the New Zealand experience. And Tony Blair’s government has been studying the KiwiSaver scheme where employees receive NZ$1,000 (£345) from the government if they start saving regularly to top up their state-provided pension.

One idea the UK has not adopted is proportional representation, yet Clark is proving adept at leading a coalition government after winning her third term in office in September 2005. ‘On 41 per cent of the vote [Labour] have a minority of seats. So we govern through relationships and understandings with other parties, and that requires a particular style. You can’t be an autocratic “it’s got to be done my way or the highway” kind of leader, because people won’t deal with you.’

She says that being a woman, and having women in senior positions in her government, suits this system. ‘I think the style I’ve developed – that you’ve got to work things through with people, try to get a result everyone can live with – is very appropriate for this style of politics.’

Perhaps Clark is mellowing after seven years in the top job: in the past she has been described (by friends, colleagues and the media) as a control freak, ‘the minister for everything’. She does admit to being self-sufficient, something that comes from her upbringing as the oldest of four daughters on an isolated North Island farm. ‘The way I grew up means that I’m very self-contained. And you need that to operate in politics. If you allowed yourself to feel every sling and insult and bit of unpleasantness you’d be a nervous wreck.’

And there were other benefits to her early family life: ‘Because there were no brothers, the girls got to do the things the boys would have done on the farm. So it’s probably quite emancipating not having brothers. I got to drive the tractor,’ she chuckles.

Is there a mood in New Zealand to be similarly emancipated from the monarchy? Clark almost sighs – I suspect she is asked this question by
every journalist she meets in Britain. ‘Nothing’s going to change fast,’ she says. ‘My view’s always been that the relationship between New Zealand and the monarchy will change, but it will be another generation away. The family link with Britain for most people is, say for my generation, more likely to be a grandparent than a parent. For my nieces’ generation it will be a great-grandparent, so the links start to attenuate a bit – most New Zealanders now are pretty firmly rooted in their country. Over time I think people will say, “Well, isn’t it time that somebody like our governor-general was the head of state?” ’

As for her own future, she has every intention of contesting the next election, for her fourth term. Retirement is not on the agenda, but it holds no fears. ‘I’ve got plenty of skiing I’d like to do, trekking I’d like to do, books I’d like to read, plays I’d like to go to.’ These are interests she shares with her husband, Peter Davis, who is professor of sociology at Auckland University.

My tea has gone cold, but at least Clark finished her cup. She stands up, shakes my hand and heads upstairs to her room – she reckons she’s got time for some sleep before her evening schedule kicks off.

11 SEPTEMBER 2004

When your father is Colonel Gaddafi, it’s only natural to conduct hostage negotiations and rear tigers during your studies. Now Saif Gaddafi is ready to bring the west and al-Qaeda to the table

By Roula Khalaf

Four months after I first suggested a lunch in London with Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, I received a telephone call from a person close to him. The son and potential heir of the maverick Libyan leader, a doctorate student in London, had settled on a faraway destination: he wanted to dine in Tripoli. A few days later I am sitting on a red velvet sofa, surrounded by walls of colourful Moroccan tiles, in Saif’s ‘farm’, a luxurious Moorish-style villa on the main highway between the airport and Tripoli. A tall young man with a boyish look and a shaved head is facing me; he is dressed in a traditional white tunic over tight black trousers, the top covered with an embroidered vest.

No one is sure what role Saif, second-eldest son to the colonel, plays in Libya. He is often credited with helping to persuade his father to resolve the Lockerbie crisis and to give up his weapons of mass destruction. Though he holds no official position, he’s the man to see if you want something done in Libya – a meeting with the leader or a business deal. His own take on this is that he is an accidental mediator: ‘I get credit because I lived in London during that time (of Lockerbie and the weapons) so it was easy for the west to contact me and easy for me to contact my father.’

The ‘facilitator’, as one businessman describes him, is as eccentric as
his father – a sort of new-age Gaddafi. He likes to shock with his behaviour and to provoke with his words. He’s unpredictable: outrageous one moment and pragmatic the next. He tells me he is just back from a jungle, where he celebrated his 32nd birthday. ‘I was invited to go to the end of Russia, to a remote place, a jungle, with birds, deer, no roads, nothing. I saw hot springs, active volcanoes.’

Saif has been studying at the London School of Economics, so our conversation is mostly in English; he speaks it well. But from time to time we switch into Arabic, our mother tongue, particularly when one of us wants to emphasize a point. He is the oldest son of the colonel’s second wife, Safiya, and he has seven siblings. His eldest brother Mohamed (son of Gaddafi’s first wife Fatiha) runs the telecommunications sector in Libya. Then there’s the footballer Saadi, who loves the limelight and has played with Perugia, a team in Italy’s Serie A league. There’s also Aisha, a law student who is looking for a political role and recently offered to be part of Saddam Hussein’s defence team.

Lunch, such as it is, takes place in front of a television screen, tuned to the pan-Arab al-Jazeera channel. Saif sits back and gazes into the distance as if posing for a picture. It’s an instant reminder of his father, depicted in portraits all over Libya with his head tilted upwards, staring into space. We are served sweet mint tea in small glasses, as is the custom in North Africa. There’s a huge basket of fruit on the table and small plates with melon and watermelon cut in cubes. But the
pièce de rèsistance
are the dates, sweet and juicy. Saif gulps a glass of buttermilk while I sip a fruit juice. ‘It’s the poor man’s meal,’ he quips.

This ‘poor man’ raises tigers as pets. He urges me not to leave without visiting his small private zoo, in the garden outside. I later meet three tigers, including a rare white breed. Saif took one of his tigers to Vienna when he went to study for a Masters in Business Administration a few years back. The MBA was squeezed between his architectural studies and the doctorate he’s still pursuing in London. Along the way he also became a painter. He won’t say who inspires him. ‘I remember the style but not all the names. It’s called the complex style; mixing techniques within one painting: surrealism, collage and realism.’ He has exhibited his paintings in several European capitals.

Saif’s doctorate is in ‘governance and non-governmental organizations’. There is no such thing as a non-government organization in
Libya. But the Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity Associations likes to act as one and it has been the vehicle through which Saif has pursued his political ambitions.

The foundation has helped to improve Libya’s image by raising human rights issues, visiting prisons and inviting Amnesty International to Libya. But it was tremendously annoyed when Amnesty later issued a report accusing Tripoli of continuing to jail and torture political prisoners and timed its publication to coincide with Colonel Gaddafi’s arrival in Brussels on his first visit to Europe in 15 years. ‘Amnesty accepted that it had come under pressure [from European political circles] to release the report during the visit. But torture is part of history, it’s finished. There are no such practices any more. We brought them [Amnesty] here to speak about facts and the achievements in human rights.’

A week after the colonel’s European trip a Libyan court handed down the death sentence to six Bulgarian medical workers who had been accused of infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus at a Benghazi hospital. Human rights organizations and European governments were outraged and consider the case to be fabricated. Saif insists the judgment must be respected, even if his foundation is against capital punishment. The case is now on appeal and there is still hope that Gaddafi will intervene and perhaps pardon the Bulgarians.

Saif tells me he wants to see political reforms in Libya, that
The Green Book
, his father’s quirky prescriptions of how a country should be run, has not been well applied, and that it would produce a democracy if it were. But he admits that Libya is a bit lost, as it tries to be accepted again by the rest of the world. ‘We haven’t taken the final decision about where we want to go. Now we are without an identity.’ He pauses, thinking about what he’s just said. He jots down notes on a yellow Post-it Note pad. ‘Yes, we’re at a crossroads. We got lost and we don’t have a passport yet.’

The foundation’s other hat is ‘conflict resolution’. It has been involved in negotiations for the release of hostages held by rebel groups in the Philippines and in Algeria, a process that sometimes involves paying a ransom to the kidnappers. ‘We accomplished miracles in that foundation, to free hostages in the Philippines or Algeria, which a lot of people had failed to do. One of the key reasons is good timing and negotiating
skills. I do the negotiations myself, even if it doesn’t appear like that sometimes.’

I tell him some people have suggested that such activities could be construed as a continuation of the same unsavoury support for rebel groups that led to Libya’s isolation. Those who criticize the foundation, he says, are simply envious of its success. But he adds nonchalantly: ‘We can do this [negotiate] because we have something in common. We’re all rebels. It’s the history of my family.’