Gadhafi speaks and speaks and speaks at the UN

Inside the General Assembly's cavernous chamber, as leaders began filling nearly every seat and aisles were standing-room only, the light-colored robes of some African and Mideast leaders dotted a sea of dark business suits. Polite applause followed the opening remarks of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and General Assembly President Ali Treki.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, in his first U.N. appearance, arrived just in time for Wednesday's leadoff speech by Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Gadhafi sat in a seventh-row aisle seat, off the left side.

Dressed in flowing brown and tan Bedouin robes, and a black beret that he self-consciously patted at times, he listened through a translation earpiece in his right ear and fiddled with the cord in his left hand. Occasionally he looked around the room.

Aides huddled around him; he kept his glasses, a red handkerchief and a rumpled yellow folder in front of him on the desk. Then he removed his earpiece to jot a note to himself and put it into the yellow folder. He joined the applause at one point. Then he flipped through the handwritten pages of flowing rows of bold Arabic characters inside the folders.

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A commotion swept the room as President Barack Obama appeared. Everyone tried to see him. Gadhafi joined in the light applause that greeted Obama, then listened raptly with the earpiece held to his left ear.

From his fifth-row aisle seat near the chamber's center, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also listened to Obama, but without an earpiece. The Iranian leader seemed relaxed. He was tieless. Ahmadinejad kept regularly checking the watch on his left wrist while peering at Obama. Next to him, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and Iran's U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazee each listened with earpieces.

As Obama gestured and read from the TelePrompTer, speaking of the dangers of nuclear proliferation, the Iranians listened intently. Ahmadinejad leaned to his right and said something to Mottaki.

Ahmadinejad and Gadhafi both refrained from joining applause for Obama's comments on Sudan, the Middle East and other U.S. pledges for peace and world security. But Gadhafi joined in clapping when Obama ended his speech. Ahmadinejad didn't. Obama didn't get a standing ovation, but he got warm applause. Many of the delegates in the room abruptly left moments after Obama spoke.

That included the entire U.S. delegation of prominent figures including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones, Obama adviser Samantha Power and Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs Esther Brimmer. Lower-level U.S. delegation staff remained.