Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi took the lectern at the United Nations on Wednesday for his first address at the General Assembly, and delivered a long and rambling diatribe — far exceeding the 15-minute limit on speeches.

Gaddafi focused on what he called the inherent unfairness of the UN, which gives the five permanent members of the Security Council far more authority than the nations in the General Assembly. This, he said, “was terrorism itself”. He even tore the edge of the founding charter of the United Nations, saying he agreed with the document’s preamble but nothing else.

Gaddafi gestured and glowered, with occasional reference to scrawled written notes.

An hour into his address, he began calling for investigations into each of the major wars that have taken place since the UN’s founding: the Korean War, the war over the Suez Canal, the Vietnam War and the wars in Iraq, which he called “the mother of all evils”.

For Obama, however, he had only warm words, calling on the collected nations to welcome “our son”.