In ABC Interview, Muammar Gaddafi Denies Protests Anywhere In Libya: “My People Love Me”

They love him, he insists. They really love him. Libya’s dictator, Muammar Gaddafi has given an interview to ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, and he says of the demonstrations across Libya, essentially, that there are no demonstrations. Anywhere. “My people love me. They would die for me,” he said.

In the interview, which included journalists from the BBC and the Times of London, Gaddafi denied protests had taken place calling for him to leave, and insisted he had never used violence against his people, despite widespread reports of military and other firing into crowds of protesters–even using military aircraft to attack demonstrators.

Amanpour, in a “reporter’s notebook” post on ABC’s website, describes the interview:

We conducted the interview at a restaurant in the Corniche, a coastal road on Tripoli’s Mediterranean coast. Gadhafi, dressed in a brown-orange robe, drove up in a small convoy of sedans, got out and greeted us. He said he wanted to get the truth out, and he spent more than an hour with us trying to put forth his side of the story for us.

As for President Obama’s public statements calling for Gaddafi to step down, Amanpour says Gaddafi laughed at the suggestion.

“The statements I have heard from him must have come from someone else,” Gadhafi said. “America is not the international police of the world.”

Watch it here, from ABC News:

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