Kadafi Goes to Sea in Patrol Boat to Meet 6th Fleet

Col. Moammar Kadafi, wearing a blue-and-green ski suit and an admiral’s cap, sailed out into the Mediterranean on Saturday to meet the U.S. 6th Fleet in a 350-ton patrol boat loaded with four missiles.

“Libya cannot be patient forever to live under America’s international terrorism,” the Libyan leader told a shipboard news conference in Misurata harbor, 125 miles east of Tripoli. “I am going out to the parallel 32.5, which is the line of death, where we will stand and fight with our backs to the wall.”

The parallel he referred to is the northern boundary of the Gulf of Sidra.

Kadafi delivered his new challenge to the United States one day after the 6th Fleet began naval air exercises off the Libyan coast, including the Gulf of Sidra.

“The Gulf of (Sidra) is part and parcel of Libyan territory,” Kadafi said. “We call on the international community to prevent the United States carrying out military maneuvers inside Libya’s economic zone . . . .”

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Anita Stockman said she had no comment on Kadafi’s trip or what he had to say about it.

Pentagon officials said the two U.S. carriers were positioned about 120 miles north of Libya’s coastline, but they refused to be more specific. The 32.5 parallel is about 100 miles out at the farthest point from the Libyan coastline.

The Pentagon officials also reported that U.S. Navy aircraft came to within “eyeball range” of four Soviet-built Libyan jet fighters about 200 miles north of the Libyan coast.

The United States and all other Western powers have refused to recognize Kadafi’s territorial claim to the strategic Gulf of Sidra as being within Libyan territorial waters beyond the traditional 12-mile limit.