US administration cool to Libyan Lockerbie offer

Warning that no official offer is on the table, Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday: ‘‘It certainly is a step in the right direction, but I don’t think it resolves the entire issue, resolves all the outstanding issues that have to be dealt with in respect to Libya and Pan Am 103.’’

As word came from Tripoli that lawyers on both sides might be close to agreement on settling a 1996 lawsuit by victims’ families against the Libyan government, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Libya’s ability to reach agreement with the families ‘‘would be a highly significant factor as we went forward to consider how to proceed’’.

‘‘But at this point it’s the first of a variety of things, requirements that need to be fulfilled. It’s not the be-all and end-all of the whole process,’’ he said.

The US still insists that Libya meet other requirements set forth in the UN Security Council resolution that imposed international sanctions: full disclosure by the Libyans of all information surrounding the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103; formal acceptance of responsibility; renunciation of terrorism; and a clean break of all ties with terror groups.

Of the 270 victims in the bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, 189 were Americans.

How their survivors feel about Libya’s compensation offer, which amounts to around €10.9m per family, will be a big factor in the administration’s determination of the next steps, Mr Boucher said.

In a five-page letter to family members, the New York-based law firm Kreindler & Kreindler called the Libyan offer a ‘‘vast multiple’’ of settlements paid in any other aviation or terrorism case.

Under the agreement, the money would be placed in escrow and released piecemeal: 40% when UN sanctions were lifted, 40% with removal of US commercial sanctions; and 20% when Libya had been removed from the US State Department’s list of sponsors of international terrorism.

The separate US sanctions include a trade ban and freeze of Libyan assets in the US, which resulted from the bombing of a West Berlin nightclub in 1986 that killed an American soldier and a Turkish woman.

The administration is recommending neither that families accept nor reject the offer, which was negotiated ‘‘lawyer-to-lawyer’’ without State Department involvement, Mr Boucher said.

But Senator Edward Kennedy, a Democrat, who has followed the case for years, greeted Libya’s offer with scorn.

‘‘US policy will be determined by changes in Libyan behaviour, not by conditions imposed by the Libyan government on compensation for the families of Pan Am 103,’’ he said.

The Libyan government has not commented on the agreement. An official in Tripoli confirmed a ‘‘preliminary deal’’ without going into detail, although Libya’s foreign minister, Abdel-Rahman Shalqam, later denied that Libya has anything to do with ‘‘whatever may have been reached’’.

‘‘I ... state that Libya, officially, was not a party to these talks,’’ Shalqam told The Associated Press in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

The official said a ‘‘political meeting’’ will be held on June 6 in London to include US and Libyan government officials.

Last year, a Scottish court convicted a Libyan intelligence agent, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, of murder for smuggling an explosive aboard flight on December 21, 1988. A co-defendant was acquitted.

All 259 people on the plane were killed. Eleven more were killed on the ground.

Discussing Libyan compliance with UN demands, the Kreindler & Kreindler statement noted that Libya met the requirement years ago that al-Megrahi be turned over for trial.

The firm also said Libya has substantially met the requirement that it renounce terrorism.

As for Libyan acceptance of responsibility for the bombing, it said negotiations on that issue involving the US, Britain and Libya may soon be concluded successfully.