Libya on Wednesday called for the United States to apologise for a State Department official's recent remarks about Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi's call for jihad against Switzerland, dpa reported.
Libya's Foreign Ministry summoned the second-in-command at the US Embassy in Tripoli to deliver an official protest regarding State Department spokesman PJ Crowley's recent comments to the press when asked about Gaddafi's call to a holy war.
"I saw that report and it just brought me back to a day in September, one of the more memorable sessions of the UN General Assembly that I can recall," Crowley said. "Lots of words and lots of papers flying all over the place, not necessarily a lot of sense."
The Libyan Foreign Ministry told the US Embassy in Tripoli's deputy chief of mission that Crowley's remarks reflected his "ignorance" of what Gaddafi had said at the world body.
US failure to apologise would affect political and economic relations between the two countries, Libya threatened.
Later Wednesday, at a meeting in the city of Sirte, Libyan officials called for an economic boycott of Swiss goods, including on imports of Swiss pharmaceuticals.
Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi last month called for jihad against Switzerland, as an "infidel, obscene state that is destroying mosques" - in reference to a Swiss referendum banning the construction of minarets.
US-Libyan relations have slowly been thawing, after decades of estrangement, since the two reestablished diplomatic ties in 2004.