Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan leader who made headlines at the United Nations this week with a 90- minute speech and attempts to pitch a tent on Donald Trump’s estate, capped his visit to New York with an appearance that looked more befitting a head of state.

He spent an hour yesterday at the Council on Foreign Relations, whose members include former diplomats Henry Kissinger and Richard Holbrooke, answering questions from corporate guests and scholars.

Qaddafi swapped the desert-colored robes he wore on the UN dais for a dark sports coat and black t-shirt. Gone too was the UN speech that wandered from demanding abolishment of the Security Council to seeking a new investigation of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Instead, the 67-year-old Qaddafi gave succinct, if evasive, answers to questions on human rights, support for terrorism and who will succeed him as Libya’s leader.

“He certainly sees this trip as the crowning achievement of his rehabilitation, and he now considers himself a true international statesman,” said Dirk Vandewalle, an associate professor of history at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a scholar of the Qaddafi regime.

After paying more than $2.7 billion to victims of the Libya- linked bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, the downing of a French jet over Libya and for supplying weapons and explosives to terrorists in Northern Ireland, the Libyan leader is positioning himself as the spokesman for all of Africa, said Vandewalle.

‘Our Buffoon’

Qaddafi, who came to power as a 27-year-old army officer in a 1969 coup d’etat, was elected chairman of the 52-nation African Union earlier this year. At the UN, he has insisted on a Security Council seat for Africa.

Libya may now be supplying the U.S. government with intelligence on al Qaeda and Islamic militants returning from Afghanistan to North Africa, a threat to both countries’ governments, said Vandewalle.

“He’s erratic, he’s unpredictable, but in a sense he’s on our side now,” said Vandewalle. “He may be a buffoon, but at least he’s our buffoon.”

In 2008, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Libya and the countries exchanged ambassadors this January. At the UN, a 10-minute pause after Obama spoke and before Qaddafi took the podium as leader of the country presiding over the Assembly this year, meant the two men did not have to shake hands.

‘Work in Progress’

Asked to characterize the U.S. relationship with Libya after Qadaffi’s visit, his first ever to the UN, State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley told reporters in New York, “Our relationship is a work in progress.”

“It is striking,” said Michele Dunne, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace. “In the past, the U.S. would have opposed Libya playing a major role in UN bodies.”

The U.S. bombed Libya in 1986, saying it was retaliation for the country’s sponsorship of terrorist attacks. Qaddafi’s compound at Bab al Aziziya was hit, killing his daughter.

U.S. and European interest in Libya’s more than $30 billion of oil reserves, the most of any African state, and the government’s five-year plan to invest 150 billion dinars ($123 billion) in infrastructure, helped Qaddafi win the West’s welcome, said Vandewalle.

The Bush administration wanted Libya’s decision to renounce nuclear weapons to inspire North Korea and Iran, said Dana Moss, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“The problem is Qaddafi doesn’t have any influence in North Korea or Iran,” said Moss.

Making Friends

To maintain his international stature, Qaddafi pursues two simultaneous paths, said Moss.

“One way he is the reformed rogue, the other he is the anti-imperialist of Africa,” wagging his finger at the U.S., said Moss. At the UN, Qaddafi called for $7.77 trillion in reparations from the U.S. and Europe for pillaging Africa in colonial times. He shores up African allies with gifts of money, fuel and infrastructure projects from Libya’s oil earnings, said Moss.

“What we’ve gotten in exchange is a removed or diminished Libyan threat to U.S. citizens and forces in the region,” said Dunne. “What we haven’t got is any change in how Libya is run as a country and only very limited change in how it acts in the international community.”

The warming of relations has not improved the plight of Libya’s dissidents, said Minky Worden, Media Director for Human Rights Watch in New York.

‘Still Repressive’

“The Libyan human rights situation is still very repressive,” Worden said after challenging Qaddafi during his talk at the Council on Foreign Relations. In an Aug. 31 report, her organization noted that despite a few steps toward reform, Libyans still can’t speak their minds without fear of being imprisoned and tortured, and the regime’s political opponents can be executed.

“Absolutely nothing has changed in Libya,” since sanctions were dropped and the country gave up its nuclear weapons program, said Hafed Algwhell, a Libyan-American opponent of Qaddafi’s regime, who lives in Washington.

“All they have done is shown the Iranians you can leverage your oil wealth and blackmail the U.S. to accept the status quo in exchange for minor changes in your nuclear position.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Peter S. Green in New York at psgreen@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 25, 2009 03:39 EDT