Gaddafi says Obama election is victory for blacks

By Konstantin Chernichkin

KIEV (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, newly on good terms with Washington, on Thursday hailed the election of Barack Obama as the next U.S. president as "the beginning of victory for black people."

But Gaddafi said he feared for Obama's safety, and said he hoped the United States' first black president would not be assassinated like John F. Kennedy or black civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

Gaddafi, dressed in a white safari suit emblazoned with a map of Africa, said recent events, including Obama's victory, were "set down 30 years ago in the Green Book," a reference to his 1970s people power manifesto that mixes elements of socialism and Islam.

"The Green Book says society's time will come. The Green Book says that blacks will govern the world and power will belong to society and to its minorities," he told reporters in a tent pitched near the state residence which had been assigned to him in Kiev.

"This can be considered the beginning of victory for black people."

Gaddafi also said he feared that Obama might face attempts on his life.

"I also fear for his security. The (kinds of) people who killed Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King and Kennedy are alive and living in America ... May God protect him."

After years of international sanctions, Libya has recently been returning to the international fold.

It has emerged from sanctions imposed in connection with the 1988 destruction of a U.S. airliner that killed 270 people over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco that killed three.

After Libya abandoned weapons of mass destruction in 2003, ties with Washington improved, culminating in a visit to Libya by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in September.

In neighboring Belarus, accused until recently by Washington of being "Europe's last dictatorship" and failing to uphold human rights standards, President Alexander Lukashenko offered his congratulations to Obama.

The foreign ministry in the ex-Soviet state, visited by Gaddafi on his way to Ukraine, said it expected the new U.S. administration to respect elections in Belarus just like it respected those in the United States.

Gaddafi and Lukashenko met in Minsk on Monday, thanked each other for support when their nations faced sanctions, and said they pursued common aims in favor of a "multi-polar world."

(Writing by Ron Popeski)