The normally staid EU capital had never witnessed anything quite like the show choreographed by the eccentric colonel who has ruled the oil-rich North African state with an iron fist for more than 30 years.

On the eve of the two-day visit to Belgium, Gadhafi's black Bedouin tent -- with its own satellite dish -- was pitched in the lush grounds of the government-owned Val Duchesse chateau on the outskirts of the capital.

In recent months, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi have both been greeted in a similar tent as they made pilgrimages to Gadhafi's desert headquarters to reward Tripoli for renouncing its support for terrorism and halting its nuclear program.

In a break with tradition, European Commission President Romano Prodi personally greeted Gadhafi at the airport and drove with the colonel's motorcade to the drab EU district of Brussels.

Prodi has taken a lot of stick for seeking to bring Libya in from the cold since he arrived in Brussels in 1999. But on Tuesday, the former Italian prime minister looked vindicated as he bear-hugged Gadhafi, who repeatedly referred to his host as "my dear brother Romano."

The two men arrived at the commission's headquarters to a riot of color as hundreds of pro-Gadhafi supporters thronged for a glimpse of the African liberation hero. The Libyan leader is used to this kind of stage-managed adulation, but Prodi -- a bashful former economics professor -- is more accustomed to people protesting against him than for him.

Beating drums and dancing in the spring sunshine, the mainly Congolese supporters wore T-shirts with Gadhafi's craggy features and waved banners with such unlikely slogans as "Vive la Belgique" and "Gadhafi -- Defender of the African People." Some even held placards venerating Prodi, the much-mocked commission president whose term expires in November.

Not everyone was delighted by the red carpet rolled out for the man once described by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan as a "mad dog." After its first fact-finding mission to Libya for 15 years, Amnesty International released a report slamming "on-going human rights violations, a continuing failure to investigate and resolve past abuses and a climate of fear in which most Libyans are afraid to raise concerns over current and past violations."

Several dozen Libyan civil rights campaigners also held their own counter-demonstration just yards from the official welcoming committee. Holding placards comparing Gadhafi to a "wolf in sheep's clothing," the protestors accused the Libyan strongman of being a "criminal," a "terrorist" and a "murderer."

The president of the Arab state saw none of this clamor. However, his 15 female bodyguards -- who circle the president wherever he goes -- experienced a security scare inside the commission's headquarters when an over-enthusiastic well-wisher dressed as a security guard tried to hand Gadhafi a letter of support, only to be bustled away by guards.

After a two-hour meeting in which Prodi presented the Libyan colonel with a pen and a symbolic Euro coin, the two men held one of the longest and strangest press conferences ever seen in the EU executive building.

As Prodi was congratulating his guest on the "bold move" he made shelving Libya's nuclear ambitions, four of Gadhafi's female bodyguards walked on to the press podium. For a moment it looked as if they were going to arrest the bemused commission president. Instead the striking-looking guards, dressed in blue camouflage fatigues, stood to attention and loomed menacingly behind the two leaders throughout Gadhafi's long, rambling statement.

In a sign of how far Tripoli has come since it bankrolled the IRA, bombed discotheques in Germany and blew up planes over Europe and Africa, Gadhafi told reporters, "Libya has decided to lead the world peace movement." Calling on all countries, including the United States and China, to get rid of their weapons of mass destruction, he said, "The whole world pledges and honors the security of Libya because Libya has forged the road on the path of peace."

However, there were still signs of the Gadhafi of old in the 40-minute speech as he harangued European countries for colonizing Africa, justified his past support for terrorist groups and declared that Libya was still prepared to revert to violence if others did not respect peace.

"We hope we won't be forced to go back to those days when we would bomb our cars, or put explosive belts around our women, so that we will not be searched and harassed in our bedrooms and in our own homes, as is taking place in Iraq and Palestine," he told a packed press room.

Gadhafi, who still describes himself as "the world revolutionary leader" on his Web site, is due to meet with Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and local businessmen and parliamentarians before heading back to Tripoli Wednesday.

Given the sudden improvement in relations between the West and Libya, this will probably not be the last time the West's former enemy No. 1 steps foot on European soil -- especially as Tripoli now looks set to become a member of the EU's Euro-Med process aimed at bringing free trade and democracy to the bloc's southern flank.

As George Parker wrote in the Financial Times newspaper Tuesday: "If all goes smoothly, Mr. Gadhafi's caravan could soon be turning up in other Western capitals, with St. James's Park in London and the Mall in Washington shaping up as possible pitches for his tent."

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