TRIPOLI (AP) - Women from around the world gathered in Libya this week for the North African country's first international beauty pageant, where contestants ditched swimsuits and sequins for T-shirts and dresses adorned with pictures of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Libya hosted the pageant and Internet users from all over the world chose the new Miss Net World. Britain's Lucy Layton won the title Saturday. Leyton and 22 other women from around the world met Gadhafi and toured the country's beaches, desert and monuments for a week.

Photographs on the pageant Web site, www.missnetworld.tv., show the young women laughing with Gadhafi. A series of photos shows U.S. contestant Tecca Zendik, 23, of Los Angeles, crying as Ghadafi tells her how the United States bombed his home.

U.S. planes bombed his house in 1986, killing his daughter, after two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman were killed in the bombing of a Berlin disco. Citing evidence of Libyan involvement, former U.S. president Ronald Reagan ordered retaliatory air strikes on two Libyan cities.

Libya was largely isolated by western officials after UN sanctions were imposed on the country in 1992.