PARIS, 1 September 2003 — Libya has agreed to increase compensation to families of the 170 people killed in the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over Africa, a lawyer advising Libya told Reuters yesterday. “The deal is done, the terms will be announced tomorrow. The representatives of the families have left Libya and are on their way home,” said Saad Djebbar, a London-based lawyer who also worked with Libya over the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Earlier, Libyan ambassador to London said families of those killed over Niger in 1989 are close to securing a compensation deal.
The Libyan negotiating team is headed by Saif Al-Islam Qaddafi, chief of the charitable Qaddafi Foundation and son of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, the diplomat said.
“Libya is trying to reach an agreement on a mutually acceptable amount. We Libyans are more generous than our French friends believe,” the ambassador said. Families returned empty-handed from Tripoli last week, where they had flown on a French government aircraft hoping to strike a deal with Libya. Family representatives returned to Tripoli on Saturday to resume compensation talks, the French foreign ministry said.
Libya has agreed to pay $2.7 billion in compensation to the families of those killed when a Pan Am jet exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, in an effort to get the international community to lift trade sanctions against Tripoli.
But France has threatened to veto a British draft resolution lifting sanctions unless Tripoli agrees to pay the families of the 170 people who died in the bombing of the UTA DC10, also blamed on Libya, in line with that paid over the Lockerbie bombing.
