President Kufuor leaves for Libya

.... Kadhafi in a coma?
... Libya denies Gaddafi ill health
Accra, May 14, GNA - President John Agyekum Kufuor left Accra on Monday for Tripoli, Libya, at the invitation of the Libyan Leader Muammar al Gaddafi.

Briefing newsmen, Mr Andrew Awuni, Presidential Spokesperson, said the visit would afford the two leaders the opportunity to review bilateral relations.

The two leaders would also review issues on the continent as well as the upcoming AU summit.

The President is expected back home on Tuesday. The Vice President, Alhaji Aliu Mahama, ministers of state and service commanders saw him off at the airport.

Libya scoffs at rumours of Kadhafi ill health

Meanwhile, Libya on Monday scoffed at rumours about Moamer Kadhafi's state of health after a report he was in a coma, and aired pictures of the veteran leader on state television.

A healthy-looking Kadhafi, the Arab world's longest serving leader, was shown greeting the wife of Minni Minawi, former Sudanese rebel leader and now senior aide to President Omar al-Beshir.

The television said the meeting took place Monday and showed a relaxed Kadhafi, wearing a brown shirt and white trousers, chatting to his guest at a small table piled with documents in a room decorated with green and yellow Islamic motifs.

The state news agency JANA said the rumours about Kadhafi, the Arab world's longest serving leader, were the subject of joking during a telephone conversation with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi on Monday morning.

"The phone call was an opportunity for the Italian prime minister to joke about a lie created by a traitor media outlet about the brother leader's health," JANA said.

Palestinian news agency Maan, quoting "informed sources," reported that Kadhafi had suffered a blood clot on the brain and was in a coma after being rushed to hospital on Sunday. It later removed the report from its website.

Prodi, on a visit to Prague, said he spoke with Kadhafi for an hour and a half late on Sunday and again on Monday.

"He told me that he was well and these things were said from time to time about political leaders," Prodi told a news conference. "I told him that at home in Italy we say that you will enjoy a long life in such circumstances."

The Italian premier said the veteran Libyan leader told him that he was in the desert and "that it was beautiful there."

Their discussions also touched the case five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who are on death row in Libya accused of infecting hundreds of children with the AIDs virus, an issue that has renewed tensions between Tripoli and the West.

Oil-rich Libya, accused of waging international attacks including the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, has gradually returned to the international fold after Kadhafi's December 2003 announcement he was abandoning weapons of mass destruction programmes.

The rumours about Kadhafi's health emerged almost exactly a year to the day after Washington announced in May 2006 it was restoring diplomatic ties with Tripoli and removing it from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

According to JANA, Kadhafi also spoke by telephone with President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of neighbouring Tunisia.

A Libyan official told AFP that Kadhafi was also expected to hold talks in Tripoli later on Monday with Ghana's President John Kufuor, whose country now holds the presidency of the African Union.

Kadhafi is also due to address England's prestigious Oxford University Union by satellite link on Wednesday, in a mark of his newfound acceptability in the West after years of pariah status.

Kadhafi, who was born in 1942, seized power in a bloodless coup in the north African nation in 1969 but he has always shunned the title of president, instead calling himself "guide of the revolution."