Why Gaddafi invited 500 women to a Roman party

The Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has clearly been learning from the the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. In Rome for the three-day UN Food Summit, Gaddafi decided he wanted 500 "pleasing" Italian women to be sent round to the Libyan ambassador's residence over a series of three evenings.

An agency that normally recruits hostesses for hospitality events duly put out the call for "girls aged between 18 and 35, at least one metre 70 high". They would be paid €50 and given "a Libyan gift".

If the miserable fee wasn't a clue that this was unlikely to be a Berlusconi-themed event, then the dress code was a dead giveway: the women were asked to dress elegantly, but no one in a miniskirt or plunging neckline would be welcome.

Why? Because the three events were to be sober evenings - no food, no drink, no sex - during which the Libyan leader would attempt to persuade the young ladies that Christianity was based on a fraud and they'd all be wise to convert to Islam.

For a report of what happened next we have to thank an ingenious female reporter from the Ansa news agency. Paola Lo Mele snuck into the the first of the three events, held on Sunday night, posing as a hostess. On Monday she reported what happened which, in a nutshell, was this:

The young women, most of whom were expecting "a party with a gala dinner", according to Lo Mele, gathered at a hotel in Rome where those inappropriately attired or not tall enough were weeded out. About 200 women were then bussed to a villa where they were ushered into a sumptuous drawing room and told to sit on a circle of red divans.

After a long delay, the great man himself was led in by his female bodyguards. He sat in the centre of the room and explained - to general incredulity - that Christ had not died on the Cross and been resurrected, but that the person crucified had been "a look-alike".

Gaddafi went on: "Convert to Islam. Jesus was sent to the Jews, not for you. Mohammed, on the other hand, was sent for all human beings.

"Whoever goes in a different direction than Mohammed is wrong. God's religion is Islam, and whoever follows a different one, in the end, will lose."

How did it go down with the girls? Not brilliantly. "I was expecting a party, not a lesson, but it was a very interesting experience," one woman told Paola Lo Mele. A blonde woman wearing a fake rabbit skin coat said simply: "I feel very offended with regard to my religion."

And what about the "Libyan gift"? Berlusconi likes to give his hostesses a pair of earrings, or a pendant. What would Gaddafi give them? Answer: a copy of the Koran, a copy of his "little green book" about the Libyan revolution, and a pamphlet entitled How to be a Muslim. ·