LONDON, 15 August 2003 — Libya has signed a deal with the families of the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, clearing the way for compensation totaling $2.7 billion to be paid in exchange for a gradual lifting of international sanctions, lawyers and the Libyan ambassador said yesterday.
But Libya’s ambassador to Britain, Mohammed Al-Zouai, told AFP that France was threatening to block the lifting of UN sanctions if it didn’t receive compensation from Libya for a separate bomb attack on a French airliner in 1989.
Under the accord, Tripoli would pay each of the families $10 million (8.8 million euros) in installments in return for the lifting of US and UN sanctions and the removal of Libya from a US list of countries viewed as state sponsors of terrorism.
“We reached an agreement (with the families of the Lockerbie victims) and, according to the timetable, we would pay the money tomorrow (Friday) and Monday or Tuesday the sanctions would be lifted,” said the ambassador. “But the French threat will block the payment of the money,” he said.
“They have threatened to veto unless Libya pays more money (for the UTA victims),” said a US official. “They are trying to piggyback on our settlement and they are trying to blackmail the Libyans because of it.”
The United Nations suspended sanctions against Libya in 1999 when Tripoli finally handed over the two Libyan agents suspected of involvement in the Lockerbie bombing.
In order for the UN sanctions to be fully lifted, Tripoli must satisfy UN Security Council resolutions calling on it to agree to compensation, to admit responsibility for the bombing and to renunciate terrorism.
US sanctions, imposed under different terms, would require those steps in addition to further moves from Tripoli.
A New York-bound Pan Am Boeing 747 blew up and crashed over Lockerbie, southwest Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988, after taking off from London, killing all 259 people on board and another 11 on the ground.
In January 2001, a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands convicted Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi, one of two Libyan agents charged with the bombing, and sentenced him to life in prison. Al-Zouai said that French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin telephoned his Libyan counterpart, Abdel Rahman Shalgham, on Wednesday and said that France would block the lifting of sanctions if it did not receive compensation in the 1989 bombing of a French UTA plane. The explosion over Niger cost the lives of 170 passengers and crew.
Representatives of British families who were bereaved by the Lockerbie bombing said they doubted whether the money would be ever paid out. “There are serious misgivings as to whether either of those installments will ever be made,” relatives’ spokesman David Ben-Aryeah said.
“The fact of the matter is that this is a financial deal for Libya. This is all Libya cares about, to extricate itself from the sanctions and re-enter the international, in particular the US market,” said Mark Zaid, US lawyer for 50 of the families.
