PARIS, 24 August 2003 — A group representing the families of the Africans who died on a French airliner blown up in 1989 over Niger yesterday demanded that Libya pay compensation equivalent to that offered to the Lockerbie victims.
“We will never accept an agreement that is under that contained in the agreement on Lockerbie,” a spokesman for the kin of the 88 Africans who died on the UTA bombing over Niger, Abderaman Koulamallah, told Radio France Internationale.
Representatives of a group representing all the 170 victims on the UTA flight have been in Tripoli since Thursday, negotiating with officials from the Qadhafi Foundation, run by Libyan leader Moamer Qadhafi’s son Seif Al-Islam.
They went with the blessing of the French government, which has threatened to block a deal under which international sanctions against Libya would be lifted in return for a $2.7 billion (2.4-billion-euro) compensation payment to the kin of the 270 people who died in the bombing of a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.
France has succeeded in delaying a UN vote on lifting the sanctions while the Tripoli negotiations take place.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has repeated that he, too, wants to see Lockerbie-sized payments to the families of all the victims on the UTA flight before sanctions are lifted. His office has emphasized that compensation was being sought for the families of all the people killed on UTA flight, regardless of the nationality.
The French aircraft was carrying 54 French, 48 Congolese, 25 Chadians, 10 Italians, eight Americans, five Cameroonians, four Britons, three Canadians, three people from the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), two Central Africans, two Malians, two Swiss passengers, one Algerian, one Greek, one Moroccan and one Senegalese.
Paris has said that a 30-million-euro ($33 million) payment by Libya to a third of the UTA families in 1989 as a “definitive resolution” of the bombing was insufficient in light of the Lockerbie deal, and it was now seeking a much higher “complementary settlement”.
Koulamallah said “it seems that the French government is giving more priority to the French families at the moment.... Let there be no mistake: the African families will never accept a cut-price deal,” he said.
A French Foreign Ministry spokesman said yesterday that the talks in Tripoli were continuing and there was no development as yet to report.
