Since the unpredictable Moammar Qaddafi surprised the world by renouncing his extensive nuclear weapons program, it was clearly part of a plan to change Libya’s terrorist image, and rejoin civilized society. He destroyed his stockpile of nuclear weapons. He paid generous compensation to the families of the victims blown up on the airliner over Lockerbie in 1988. He announced it was time for his isolated country to “open up to the world.”

Today, his intelligence agencies are cooperating in the global campaign against terrorists by identifying terrorist networks that had gone into Iraq. Libya has been taken off the list of terrorist states, and UN sanctions have been removed. He has re-established normal diplomatic relations with the US and European countries.

But with the global recession, despite its oil reserves, Libya has found it difficult to revive its stagnant economy. Exports have begun to come in. A US embassy has reopened in Tripoli after 25 years. His second son, Saif-ul-Islam, gave an interview to Reuters describing a grand plan for Libya’s economic and social development including a new constitution, new laws, a consumer code and a business code and a new flat tax structure. But an entrenched bureaucracy, and his own conservative older brother are not in favor of such radical change.

Saif, who won his doctorate at the London School of Economics, envisions a bright future in both investment and tourism. He has introduced tax free investment zones and announced the construction of a string of luxury hotels, part of them on Libya’s vast undeveloped Mediterranean coast. He points out that Libya’s capital, Tripoli, is only a three-hour flight from London. Part of his plan is to clean up and revive Tripoli itself which has fallen into disrepair during the years when Libya was a pariah state and no one came to visit.

His father approves the plans for development and is cooperating with the US and Europe on nuclear disarmament, the war against terrorism and immigration policies.

Qaddafi, who was named chairman of the African Union which he helped found, has apparently come around to the belief that as a secular leader, he is as apt to be a victim of radical Islamists as other open societies.

He wants to be on the right side of history and he and his son are making the appropriate moves.