HAMBURG, 17 August 2003 — Libya has promised Germany it will provide compensation for people who were killed or injured in a bomb attack on a West Berlin nightclub popular with US troops in 1986, weekly magazine Der Spiegel reports in its latest issue, due out tomorrow.
Der Spiegel said Libya had made the offer several months ago. The German Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the report, which comes just days after Libya sent a letter to the United Nations formally accepting responsibility for the bombing of a Pan Am jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988.
Libya’s acceptance of responsibility in the Lockerbie affair — and its promise earlier this week to pay each of the 270 victims $10 million each in compensation — were among the conditions Tripoli was told to meet before the UN would agree to lift sanctions it imposed on Libya in the early 1990s.
The April 6, 1986 attack on “La Belle”, a disco popular with US soldiers stationed in West Berlin, killed three US servicemen and one Turkish woman and injured 260 other people.
Immediately after the bombing, the US accused Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi of being behind the attack.
Ten days later the US bombed the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, killing some 40 people including Qaddafi’s young adopted daughter.
In a separate case, Tripoli reached a deal with France last year to pay 30 million euros ($34 million) to the families of 170 people killed in the bombing of a French UTA aircraft over Niger in 1989.
Britain said yesterday it would “shortly” table a draft Security Council resolution to lift UN sanctions against Libya after Tripoli formally accepted responsibility for the Pan Am bombing.
Junior Foreign Office Minister Denis MacShane said in a statement: “Libya has accepted responsibility for that outrage. At the same time it has agreed to pay substantial compensation to the relatives of those who were murdered. It has renounced terrorism and has agreed to co-operate with any further Lockerbie investigation ... We are therefore supporting the lifting of sanctions by the UN.”
“Our Permanent Representative to the UN will table a draft security council resolution to that effect shortly.”
The White House said the United States would not oppose the lifting of sanctions. But it still has concerns about Qaddafi’s administration in Libya and a dispute with France, which has threatened to block the resolution, must also be settled to get the resolution passed.
France has threatened to veto the Security Council resolution unless Libya boosts compensation to the families of people killed in the 1989 bombing of a French UTA aircraft.
Libya said yesterday it was optimistic about its future relations with the US now that Tripoli had formally accpted responsibility for the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie.
“We are confident that we will have privileged relations with the United States as we were able to have with Britain,” Hassuna Al-Shawush, number two at the Libyan Foreign Ministry said.
