Libya agrees airline bomb compensation
Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi says agreement over compensation has been reached between his country and the families of the 170 victims of a French airliner that exploded nearly 14 years ago.
“The Gaddafi charitable organisations have been dealing with the families to reach an agreement and they have reached an agreement,” Gaddafi said during a speech televised live last night on state-run TV on the eve of the anniversary of the 1969 coup that brought him to power.
The Libyan leader was referring to the Gaddafi International Association for Charitable Organisations, a body headed by one of his sons.
He did not reveal any details about the compensation package.
Families of the passengers who perished when the UTA airliner crashed over the Niger desert on September 19 1989, have been lobbying for more compensation from Libya.
A French court earlier convicted six Libyans – including Gaddafi’s brother-in-law – in absentia over the bombing. In 1999, Libya provided victims’ families with $33m (€30m).
However, France wanted to renegotiate the compensation after Libya recently agreed to pay families of the 270 victims of the 1988 Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland a total of $2.7bn (€2.4bn) US dollars, or between$5m (€4.5m) and $10m (€9.1m) each.
Gaddafi said the UTA “file was closed” after it paid the initial compensation amount to the French families of the victims.
But he said the French government came under pressure from the victims’ relatives after it became clear that the family members of the Lockerbie relatives would receive a higher amount of compensation.
Libya, subsequently, came under international pressure to protect the French government from “further embarrassment”.
Gaddafi had spoken earlier with French resident Jacques Chirac. The French foreign ministry released a statement saying the French-Libyan contacts were continuing “in a constructive spirit”.
On the Lockerbie deal, Gaddafi said Libya was compelled to pay the compensation so sanctions against Libya could be lifted and its name removed from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism.
“Is it about money? What can we do with money? Is it not to defend our country? What matters to us is honour. We don’t care about money,” he said.
“The case of Lockerbie is now behind our backs. The Libyans have displayed wisdom and courage as well as efficiency in conducting this strategic conflict.”
Following Libya’s commitment this month to pay the Lockerbie compensation, accept responsibility for the bombing and renounce terrorism, Britain proposed to the United Nations Security Council to lift sanctions preventing arm sales and air travel to the north African country.
Gaddafi, who wore a white suit when he delivered his speech at an undisclosed open-air auditorium packed with thousands of cheering Libyans, touched on a wide range of issues, in particular the US-led occupation of Iraq, Libyan relations with America and the Arab world and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
International journalists who travelled to Tripoli to cover the 1969 coup anniversary celebrations were barred from attending the speech.
The Libyan leader, in his early 60s, also cast doubt over America’s ability to triumph in Iraq, a country whose people, he said, would fight to the death to rid their land of any foreign occupiers.
“If an Iraqi wants to die, he won’t care about Libyan, Egyptian or American forces. He will attack any foreign forces on his lands, even if that land was close to Mecca [Islam’s holiest shrine, located in Saudi Arabia],” he said.
In what appeared to be a veiled warning to the United States against considering military action in Libya after Iraq, Gaddafi said: “If they will come back to fight us, we will fight them back.”
Libya strongly opposed the US-led war against Saddam Hussein’s regime and threatened to withdraw from the Arab League organisation over that body’s failure to prevent the war in Iraq.
Gaddafi also criticised Arab countries for failing to support Libya when it was under US pressure over the Lockerbie bombing and other events.
“What makes us belong to them [the Arabs], what honour and what advantage? In Lockerbie they didn’t help us. All of them were against us,” he said.
On Libyan-US relations, Gaddafi said there were areas where both countries could see eye-to-eye, including their joint opposition to dictatorships and religion being mixed with politics and terrorism.
