TRIPOLI: The eldest son of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi said Italy would pay Libya billions to compensate the country for three decades of colonial rule, the state-run news agency reported yesterday.
Addressing government and security officials on Thursday, Seif Al-Islam Qaddafi described the Italian-Libyan deal as historic and said it would be signed soon, the JANA news agency reported. He said “billions” would be given to Libya in the form of infrastructure projects, educational scholarships and work to clear land mines that Tripoli says are left over from the period of Italian rule, from 1911 to 1943.
On Thursday, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said his country was aiming to sign what he described as “a friendship treaty” with Libya by Aug. 31.
The two countries have been trying to negotiate such a deal for several years. Tripoli has demanded a goodwill gesture like building a highway or a hospital to turn the page on the colonial past. In March 2006, Berlusconi said he favored a highway construction project as compensation. The Foreign Ministry in Rome did not return calls seeking comment.
On a different issue, Seif Al-Islam Qaddafi demanded that the United States pay compensation for airstrikes in 1986.
That year, former US President Ronald Reagan ordered airstrikes on Tripoli and Benghazi that Libyans say killed 41 people, including Muammar Qaddafi’s adopted daughter, and wounded 226 others. The raid was in response to Libya’s bombing of a West Berlin disco that claimed the lives of two American soldiers.
“Without compensating the Libyan victims... there is no way this file will be closed,” Seif Al-Islam Qaddafi was quoted as saying in reference to Libyan-US negotiations to normalize relations.
