Kadafi Designated Supreme Leader Over All Libya

TRIPOLI, Libya — The General People’s Congress ended an eight-day meeting by elevating Moammar Kadafi to the status of supreme leader, giving him wide-ranging authority to overrule virtually any decision with which he disagrees.

The meeting, which ended Friday night, passed a law saying that Kadafi’s role in the 1969 revolution gives him a legitimacy from which all the country’s institutions derive their authority.

“So instructions issued by the leader of the great revolution, brother Col. Moammar Kadafi, are binding, and it is a duty to carry them out,” a declaration of revolutionary legitimacy said.

Kadafi’s new status is meant to clear up ambiguities over his role after he repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the political arena, leaving the system to run itself.

But political observers said it remains unclear exactly what powers Kadafi has been imbued with.

The General People’s Congress failed, however, to resolve an acrimonious dispute between the executive branch and deputies over financing the welfare state, with neither side the clear winner.