London - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, whose country is on a US list of states sponsoring terrorism, said members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda guerrilla network were terrorists, crazy and mad.

In comments broadcast on Thursday, he said in an interview with CNN that Libya would arrest and put on trial any al-Qaeda member found in the country.

"We are not in need of bin Laden, we don't need his money and we don't need his protection and we don't want to use him or be used by him. These terrorist groups which we term heretics are non-Muslims.

"They are terrorist people, crazy and mad...," he added.

'We even suffered from them'

"We even suffered from them. A number of elements from Afghanistan were successful to infiltrate and come back and cause quite a lot of trouble to us and some of them got killed in action," he added. He did not elaborate.

"I would like to reassure the Americans and non-Americans that Libya plays a very important role in combating and fighting terrorism," he added.

The United States bombed Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986 in retaliation for what it said was Libya's responsibility for a disco attack in Germany that killed two American soldiers.

Gaddafi, who once saw himself as the chief Arab scourge of the United States, Europe and Israel, has striven in recent years to win international respectability and attract badly needed foreign investment in Libya's oil-based economy.

Diplomats in Tripoli say he has shut training camps in Libya for guerrillas from around the world, from Sierra Leone to the Philippines, bulldozing most of them.

'Libya is innocent'

The Libyan leader quickly offered condolences for the September 11 attacks on the United States, blamed on al-Qaeda.

He declared that America had the right to retaliate and submitted information on Libyans thought to have links with al-Qaeda. But his support for the campaign against global terrorism has yet to convince the United States to thaw relations.

Gaddafi told CNN a series of trilateral meetings between US, British and Libyan officials to discuss Libya's response to UN resolutions and accept liability for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing "have gone a long way", but did not elaborate.

The mid-air bombing of a Pan Am airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie killed 270 people. The trilateral meetings began in London last October, with the fourth round taking place in June.

"Libya is innocent," Gaddafi told CNN when asked about Lockerbie. He said Libya wanted "excellent and good relations with America".

In 2001, a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands found Libyan Abdel Basset al-Megrahi Megrahi guilty of the bombing, sentenced him to life in jail and said it accepted evidence he was a member of Libya's Jamahariya Security Organisation. Megrahi appealed against the verdict, but Scottish appeal judges in the Netherlands in March upheld his conviction. Libya has always denied any role in the bombing.

Asked what would Libya's reaction be if the United States attacked Iraq, Gaddafi said: "If such a thing takes place, people will say bin Laden was right because America is practising terrorism".