Keep on moving, Moammar.
Agents for the terrorist-coddling Libyan strongman Moammar Khadafy were met with a strong-arm from a real-estate broker they approached to rent a posh Upper East Side townhouse for his visit to the city this week.
The broker, with characteristic New York chutzpah, told them to take a hike back to the desert.
“They kept asking, ‘What would be the price? What would be the price?’ I thought about it and said, ‘Why don’t you send Megrahi back to Scotland, and then maybe we can work something out.’ They hung up on me immediately,” said Jason Haber, a broker for Prudential Douglas Elliman.
Haber was referring to convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was released from prison in Scotland last month with terminal cancer and greeted with a hero’s welcome in Tripoli that Khadafy orchestrated.
Uproar over the release has made it hard for Khadafy to find a place to set up his Bedouin tent while in town for the UN General Assembly.
Residents of Englewood, NJ, had already rejected his plan to stay at a home the Libyan Mission owns there, so diplomats approached Haber about the swank rental pad he was peddling at 5 E. 78th St.
“They were very rude on the phone, and I asked who it was for. They said it was for a high-ranking member of the Libyan delegation, and they said there would be high security,” he said.
“It sounded more and more to me as we spoke that this was for Khadafy.”
But while only one of the building’s three apartments was on the block — a 3,700-square-foot duplex for $28,000 a month — the Libyans insisted on renting the whole building.
“At that point, I knew the deal couldn’t happen, so I was hoping maybe I could solve an international political situation through a simple real-estate deal — but I guess it wasn’t meant to be,” he said.
Following that rejection, the Libyans finally settled on housing their leader at the country’s East 48th Street mission.
“I know they are a member nation of the UN, so they get whatever limited rights to come and stay here, but for us living here we have the right to say no, given world events going on right now,” Haber said.