Kadafi Denies Disco Bombing Role

ROME —  Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi said in the text of a videotape message released Friday that his country was not involved in the April 5 bombing of a West Berlin discotheque that triggered a U.S. air strike against Libya.

The text of the message, addressed to the Italian people, was released by Italy’s small left-wing Proletarian Democracy Party, which said the videotape was given to a party delegation during a recent nine-day visit to Libya.

“America practices state terrorism in order to prevent us (from) living in peace in our country,” Kadafi is quoted as saying. “We are not connected with the attack on the discotheque in Berlin, which cannot, in any case, be used as a justification for this aggression. Those responsible for this attack must be caught and tried,” Kadafi said.

The United States, saying it was retaliating for terrorist attacks by Libya against Americans, launched a air strike April 15 against Tripoli and Benghazi.

Two people, including an American serviceman, were killed and 230 were wounded in the discotheque bombing. A second American serviceman died later from the injuries he suffered in the blast.

Kadafi also was quoted as saying that Libya’s missile attack against a U.S. Coast Guard navigation station on the Italian island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean was necessary because the island was “the base that the American 6th Fleet was using in the attack against our country.”

A Libyan patrol boat fired two missiles at the facility soon after the U.S. raid, but they fell into the water, well short of the target.