Reuters, UK: Gaddafi to visit EU headquarters

Update: Gaddafi attends EU regulatory meeting by accident, expresses confusion over seed standardization memo review

Brussels— Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi took a wrong turn in the EU Headquarters’ Breydel Building yesterday, walking past the room designated for his meeting with attachés to Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel and stopping at a scheduled meeting of the Standing Committee on Seeds and Propagating Material for Agriculture, Horticulture and Forestry. “We were just setting up,” said Committee Director Marcantonio Valvassori, “and he walked in.. we did not recognize him as the Libyan leader and instead thought that he was some sort of observer.” The standing committee proceeded with its second-tier update review of Commission Directive 2002/53/EC, revisiting the sub-issue of whether a maize blend should be listed, as many varietal associations are listed, as a ‘pollination dependent hybrid.’ Gaddafi, who is fluent in French, remained seated for most of the meeting, maintaining a stoic expression long after it became clear that he was in the wrong room. “It was really awkward,” said Valvassori, “but we didn’t want to be impolite and he didn’t seem to want to leave so we just proceeded… he totally didn’t get my joke about the regulatory ‘maize’ that we were facing and he may even have drifted off during the when we started talking about fallout from the 2003 OECD AGR/CA/S/A meeting…Lang passed a note saying that we should all do something weird, like sit on the floor or turn and face the window to see whether he would do the same but then we just let it drop.”

Staff at the Breydel Building indicated that such mistakes are a regular problem “Meeting rooms change all the time,” said one staffer, “he’s just lucky that he didn’t get lost in the Justus Lipsius building…end up in the wrong hallway there and you’ll get torn up... especially during lunch.”

- posted by JB @ 3:22 AM