CHICAGO -- Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy says he stands ready to arm a black army in the United States to destroy 'white America' and set up an independent state.
Khadafy spoke by satellite Sunday to the 1985 Nation of Islam International Savior's Day Convention, hosted by Louis Farrakhan, whose controversial remarks last year prompted the Rev. Jesse Jackson to repudiate Farrakhan during Jackson's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Speaking in broken English, Khadafy urged the 400,000 black soldiers in the U.S. Army to leave the military and create a separate force.
'You have the force. You have the soldiers,' Khadafy told an estimated 13,000 people at the convention. 'Call them now to leave immediately. This number is enough to create a strong army to the future enemy. We are ready to give you arms because your cause is just.'
Khadafy, introduced by Farrakhan as a 'fellow struggler in the cause of liberation for our people,' assured blacks who take up his call that he would fight beside them.
'We are with you. Don't worry. You have to trust us. We will fight together shoulder by shoulder. The final victory will be soon,' he said.
'This country must be destroyed,' Khadafy said. 'They (white Americans) refuse to accept you as American citizens. This means you are obliged to create a separate and independent state.'
He said whites have sealed their fate by failing to accept blacks: 'The whites force you to do this by refusing you in political and social life.'
Farrakhan also called for an end to white America.
'It would be an act of mercy to end the white man's world because your world is killing you and us and all of humanity,' he said. He called on American Indians and 'whites of good will' to join the fight.
Last year, Farrakhan, who had endorsed Jackson, created controversy by describing Adolf Hitler as 'a great man' and Judaism a 'gutter relgion.' Jackson later called the remarks 'reprehensible and morally indefensible.'
At the convention, Farrakhan rebuked black leaders for looking to the government for assistance, and praised the president for cutting entitlement programs.
'Thank God for Ronald Reagan,' Farrakhan said. 'Don't look to the same white father that your slave-mentality grandparents looked to. You've got to look to yourself.'
Farrakhan called for the formation of a group called People Organized Working for Economic Rebirth to estblish a black-run corporation to supply goods and services in the black community.
