Libya: Deal In '89 Airliner Blast
A Libyan charity said Monday it would increase payments to families of those killed in a 1989 terror attack on a French airliner, a gesture that Libya hopes will persuade France to agree to lift U.N. sanctions.
In a statement Monday, the Gadhafi International Association for Charitable Organizations said that a privately financed "fund for the victims of terrorism" it had established — but not the Libyan government — would pay unspecified compensation to the families of the 170 people who died when the French UTA airliner exploded over the Niger desert.
The charity is closely linked to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
In response, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin indicated France might now be ready to see the U.N. sanctions lifted.
"We have always said that we uphold the principle of lifting sanctions, and of course we will be drawn very quickly toward a decision," de Villepin said on RFI radio.
Gadhafi had announced the agreement in a speech a day earlier but offered no details. The foundation, which is headed by one of Gadhafi's sons and has played a major role in his efforts to clean up his image, portrayed the agreement as a humanitarian gesture.
The Gadhafi foundation added without elaboration that the compensation agreement also would "resolve" the cases of six Libyans convicted by a French court in absentia in 1999 of bombing the plane and sentenced to life in prison. Libya never extradited the six — including a brother-in-law of Gadhafi who was an intelligence agent — and the foundation maintained Monday that the six were innocent.
In his radio interview, de Villepin said nothing about the agreement addressing the six convicted Libyans.
After the 1999 verdict, Libya agreed to transfer $33 million to France to compensate the victims, but Gadhafi said at the time that that was not an admission of guilt.
Families of the victims have campaigned unsuccessfully to have Gadhafi tried in the bombing. The Libyan leader has long been accused of sponsoring anti-Western terrorism around the world.
French families began lobbying for a new compensation agreement after Libya recently agreed to pay families of the 270 victims of the Pan Am bombing up to US$10 million each. Families of the 170 victims of the French flight each received about US$194,000.
"It's a matter of fairness," de Villepin said Monday. "We wanted to take all these victims into account to apply the principle of fairness in relation to the Lockerbie attack."
In contrast to the French case, Libya accepted responsibility for Lockerbie and, after intense international negotiations, handed over two of its citizens for trial in the West.
In 2001, a Scottish court convicted a Libyan intelligence agent of the Lockerbie bombing and sentenced him to life imprisonment. A second Libyan was acquitted.
The Lockerbie agreement opened the way for Libya to be freed from U.N. sanctions that limited arms and oil equipment sales, air travel and diplomatic links to the north African country. The French government had threatened to block a British proposal to lift the sanctions, saying it wanted a better deal for the UTA victims' relatives.
Gadhafi had spoken Sunday by phone with French President Jacques Chirac. In his speech Sunday, Gadhafi said France was "embarassed" by the Lockerbie deal and asked directly and through African and other Arab intermediaries for reconsideration of the UTA settlement.
"And therefore there was a solution by the foundation for this humanitarian issue," Gadhafi said. "By this we have reached a new era with the West."
On Lockerbie, Gadhafi said Sunday that Libya was compelled to pay compensation so sanctions could be lifted and Libya's name removed from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism.
Gadhafi has been trying to bury his image as a rogue who sponsors terrorism and meddles in the affairs of nations from Africa to the Philippines. In recent years he has tried to bring his country into the global economy and be accepted as a statesman ready to solve regional and international crises.