Libya withdrew from an Arab summit in Tunis on Saturday in protest at the agenda and at the Arab League's failure to take up Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's proposal for a single Israeli-Palestinian state.
"Unfortunately, Libya is forced to boycott the summit because it does not agree to the agenda of the Arab governments. Libya wants the agenda of the Arab peoples," Gaddafi told a news conference after walking out of the summit.
He said he hoped Libya's basic people's congresses, local councils which theoretically decide Libyan policy, would agree to Libyan withdrawal from the Arab League.
Libya has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the 22-member league and Gaddafi was a reluctant participant in the Tunis meeting, which was meant to present a united Arab front on Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and political reform.
Gaddafi criticised the secretariat of the Arab League for shelving his plan, known as a "white paper", to revive a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian solution.
The one state, from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan, would includes Israelis and Palestinians as equals. Most Arab states, along with the international community, favour separate Israeli and Palestinian states living in peace side by side.
Gaddafi said: "I stand beside the Arab peoples, not with the Arab governments."
In the rambling news conference, he said the demographics of Israel and the Palestinian territories, and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, made his one-state proposal the only solution to the conflict.
Gaddafi walked out about half an hour into the opening session as Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa defended the league from what he said were attempts to break it up.
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