Veto bargaining
France insists on striking a new compensation deal with Libya over the bombing of a French airliner before sanctions can be lifted. Rasha Saad reports
UN Security Council diplomats were busy on Monday trying to prevent a French veto of a British resolution to lift UN sanctions on Libya in return for compensating the families of the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The draft resolution was part of a deal presented by Britain after years of frustrating negotiations. According to the deal, Libya is required to pay compensation to the tune of $2.7 billion into a Swiss bank account for the relatives of the 270 victims who died as a result of the crash of PanAm Flight 103 in 1988. Libya has said it would deposit the money as early as Tuesday.
Diplomatic sources said council members were set to vote on the resolution by Friday. But France, which has power of veto, has threatened to block the deal unless Tripoli increases compensation for victims of a different bombing in 1989, which destroyed a French UTA airliner and claimed 170 lives. Libyan authorities have rejected the French demand as "blackmail " and are refusing to discuss the issue.
However, Tripoli's decision to accept responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing after years of denial, had run into controversy. The deal was condemned by many as a sheer business deal. A British member of parliament, Tom Dalyell, long sceptical about Tripoli's role in the bombing, said on Saturday that even though the Libyan authorities had accepted responsibility for the attack, this was no definite proof of guilt. They did so "purely because they were desperate to get back into the international trading circuit", he said.
Accepting responsibility for Lockerbie is one of the requirements Libya must meet before the UN agrees to lift the sanctions it imposed after the bombing. The sanctions were suspended, but not formally lifted, in 1999, after Libya handed over two of its nationals to stand trial for the bombing before a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands. One of the two, Abdel-Basset Al-Migrahi, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. The other Libyan, Lamine Fahima, was acquitted.
Dalyell said that Al-Migrahi was used as "a scapegoat" to get the sanctions lifted, which meant "we got not only the wrong man but the wrong regime." Al-Migrahi is now serving his sentence in Barlinnie prison in Scotland and Dalyell is supporting Al-Migrahi's appeal against his conviction in the European Court of Human Rights.
Libyan officials, for their part, do not deny the business aspect of the deal. According to Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalgam, Libya "purchased" a lifting of sanctions by agreeing to pay the compensation to the families of the victims.
"From Libya's point of view, it's not about compensation but a purchase for the lifting of sanctions," Shalgam told the Qatar-based satellite television channel Al-Jazeera on Monday.
"We are losing billions of dollars each year as a result of international and US sanctions and it's a sign of wisdom and courage, and it's in our national interest, to pay $2.7 billion to end this affair," he added.
According to political analysts, the Libyan regime was forced to strike this deal as a step towards improving relations with the US out of fear, in particular, of becoming a target in the US war on terrorism and suffering the same fate as Saddam Hussein's regime.
"We must open a dialogue with America and try to improve our relations with them because the whole region is following America's policy," Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son, Seif Al- Islam, said on Monday.
Speaking to Al-Arabiya Arab satellite, Seif Al-Islam -- a prominent figure in Libya who has been politically active in recent years either as an envoy representing his father abroad or through the Gaddafi International Association for Charitable Organisations -- said that Libya does not "want to make trouble with any country, especially the US, and I do not think the US has any hidden agendas on Libya".
Seif Al-Islam's comments came a day after Shalgam told the Associated Press that his country, isolated by years of UN and US sanctions, would welcome the restoration of relations with the US now that Libya has accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing.
The Libyan leader has been seeking normal ties with the US, which lists his country as one of the terrorism-sponsoring states, and has condemned the 11 September attacks and also arrested Islamic militants. His initial efforts to mend broken fences, however, failed, and now Libyans are hoping that the agreement to set up the compensation fund will result in the lifting of the sanctions.
Libyans are also hoping that their country's agreement to set up a $2.7 billion fund to compensate the families of the bombing's 270 victims will pave the way for the lifting of unilateral US sanctions imposed in 1986. This would permit the return of US companies to the North African oil-rich nation. The White House said on Friday it would keep the US measures in force as Washington still had concerns about Libya's suspected pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, its "destructive role" in regional conflicts in Africa and its "poor human rights record and lack of democratic institutions".
However, Libyan officials remain optimistic and regard normalising ties with the US as a win-win situation. Shalgam believes that this White House statement does not represent the "true intentions of America". He believes that "the causes for the disputes between Libya and the US have ended, [and that] the two countries need each other to fight the terrorism both nations suffer from, and in the economic and investment fields."
Trying to come in from the diplomatic cold, Libya has also reportedly signalled to the German government that it is ready to offer compensation for the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin discotheque, which the US blamed on the Libyan leader at that time, according to a report by the German weekly Der Spiegel over the weekend. The blast at the "La Belle" club killed two US soldiers and a Turkish woman. Ten days after the blast, Washington launched retaliatory air strikes on Libya. Gaddafi's house was among the targets hit, and his adopted daughter was killed. Lawyers for non-US victims are seeking a total of $45 million in compensation. "We are confident that the matter will be settled before the end of this year," Berlin lawyer Burkhard Koetke was quoted as saying.
European Commission head Romano Prodi hoped the EU could normalise ties with Libya after the lifting of sanctions. "We want to try to come to an agreement with Libya to [..] allow it to be integrated, if that's what it wants. Obviously we want it, and we hope that they will also see that it is of benefit to them as well," he said.
Britain was one of the first European countries to reestablish diplomatic relations with Libya in 1999 after it accepted "general responsibility" for the fatal shooting in 1984 of a London policewoman, Yvonne Fletcher, by a member of the Libyan Embassy in London. A year ago, the British Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East Mike O'Brien, became the first British minister to visit Libya since the policewoman's murder. He said Libya was "moving away from being an outlaw pariah state towards engagement with the West, with the rest of the international community and in compliance with international law".
While most victim's relatives welcomed the letter and the terms of the compensation plan, others echoed Dalyell's sceptical view of the "business deal". One of the relatives, Susan Cohen, vowed that she and other families of the victims would fight to keep the US sanctions in place.
In addition, a group of about 100 Libyan opponents in exile in London sent a letter of protest to Kofi Anan, the UN secretary- general, on Friday saying "the Gaddafi regime must be punished for its crime, rather than be rewarded."
