ROME — Flamboyant Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi has hired 200 young Italian women for another evening of political and religious discussion on the margins of the UN food summit, reports said Tuesday.
For the second evening running, Kadhafi used a local model agency to round up girls that were at least 1.70 metres (five feet seven inches) tall, soberly but elegantly dressed, and with heels of seven centimetres or more, Italian papers said.
Paid 60 euros for the evening, they were put in buses and taken to the Libyan ambassador's residence, where Kadhafi -- in Rome for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) summit -- was waiting.
Unlike on Monday night, where 100 young women sat through a one-hour lesson on Islam, the West and the status of women, Kadhafi opened up for a question and answer session.
He was asked what he though of Italy being condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for displaying crucifixes in schools, La Repubblica newspaper and the Ansa news agency said.
"The important thing is not to put religion into the state. In Libya we don't oblige anyone to hang a crescent on the wall, and those who want to can," he was quoted as saying.
And a repeat of his appeal to the women the previous night, he urged the girls to convert to Islam and offered to help them travel to Mecca on pilgrimage if they did so.
Early in the day, Kadhafi conducted an impromptu walkabout in Rome, bring the city centre to a standstill.
