A leafy New Jersey suburb will soon turn into a seething oasis of outrage when Libyan President Moammar Khadafy plops down a Bedouin tent in the middle of town next month while here for a UN General Assembly meeting.
Khadafy, who habitually travels with a large air-conditioned tent wherever he goes, will put up his shelter on the front lawn of a home in Englewood, NJ, owned by the Libyan Mission to the United Nations.
Neighbors are none too pleased that the terrorist-coddling dictator will land among them. Khadafy was most recently photographed warmly embracing Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the convicted bomber of Pan Am Flight 103, as he returned home after being released from a Scottish prison.
“I think having a terrorist living next door would be devastating, and I’d consider moving,” said one Englewood resident who declined to give her name.
“The [government] is trying to fight terrorism, and they’re opening the door for this man?” asked another longtime resident who also requested anonymity.
The suburban New Jersey town has a large Orthodox Jewish population. A Jewish day school is one block from the Libyan property. And Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of such books as “Kosher Sex” and a one-time spiritual adviser to Michael Jackson, lives right next door.
In a column in The Jerusalem Post, Boteach wrote that he was willing to be open-minded about the situation but still had reservations.
Most residents had trouble understanding why Khadafy would want to go there at all.
“Why would a head of government come to this small community to live?” asked Dr. Peter Scaglione. “He must have an ulterior motive.”
In fact, it’s not the first time Khadafy has attended the meeting of the General Assembly, slated to begin on Sept. 23.
Typically, he erects his tent on UN property, but since that area is under construction, he has to seek alternative accommodations.
The Libyans asked city officials if the tent could be constructed in Central Park, but the request was rejected out of hand, sources said.
That led them to turn to the Englewood property, where the mission has owned a small mansion since 1983 for use by its diplomats as a weekend home.
Construction crews worked furiously yesterday to fix up the house, which neighbors said had recently fallen into disrepair.