Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has cancelled a planned visit to Canada next week.

A Canadian government official told CBC News on Saturday that Gadhafi won't be landing in Newfoundland early next week to refuel his plane and stay for a night.

The Libyan leader was expected to make a one-day stopover in St. John's.

The Associated Press has reported that hotel reservations for Gadhafi in St. John's have been cancelled and Libya's advance team has left.

The mayor of St. John's said he was surprised by the cancellation, adding it just deepens the mystery of the African leader's proposed visit.

"What I heard this morning was that if the RCMP were not able to take over his security then he would not be allowed to leave the plane," Mayor Dennis O'Keefe told CBC News.

"The whole thing has been a bit of an enigma right from the very start."

On Thursday, the Prime Minister's Office confirmed that Gadhafi would be heading to St. John's for a quick unofficial visit on his way back to Libya. Gadhafi addressed the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday for the first time, giving a rambling, disconnected speech that lasted about 90 minutes.

Canada had planned to send Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon to meet with Gadhafi to express Canada's displeasure over the hero's welcome Libya gave to the Libyan national convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

All 259 people aboard Pan Am Flight 103 and 11 people on the ground died when a bomb blew up the plane over Scotland in 1988.

Gadhafi seized power in Libya after leading a coup in 1969 against King Idris I.

The West has, for years, accused him of supporting international terrorism. He managed to shed some of that isolation in 2003 when he announced he would dismantle his country's programs to build chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

That same year, Libya reached a political agreement with the United States and Britain to accept civil responsibility and pay up to $10 million per victim to relatives of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing.

With files from The Associated Press