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Can Libya come in from cold?

Can Libya come in from cold?

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The verdict in the Camp Zeist trial revives two difficult questions for America, the United Kingdom and the United Nations: Do they now let Libya in from the cold and, if so, how far?

Relatives of the Lockerbie victims want Libya to remain classified as a rogue state. Western public and media opinion largely seems to be behind them.

 QUOTE
"As experience with Saddam Hussein has shown, sanctions policies have a limited life and fall into disrepute as they begin to be evaded" - Robin Oakley

But some Western leaders believe that Libya has begun to step aside from state-sponsored terrorism and, if so, wants the country to be encouraged along that path rather than driven back into isolation.

The court decided that Abdel Baset Al-Megrahi was guilty of placing the bomb which killed 259 people on PanAm Flight 103 and another 11 on the ground at Lockerbie in December 1988 but that Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah was innocent.

But an underlying question was not determined at Camp Zeist, a conspiracy charge having been dropped. Who gave the orders for a bomb to be placed?

Although some have sought to point the finger at Syrians, Iranians or various Palestinian groups the Gadhafi regime has always been the prime suspect.

The suspicions were sometimes fed by Gadhafi's own veiled hints that the downing of Flight 103 had been retaliation for American air strikes on Libya, mounted from Britain, after U.S. servicemen had been killed in the terrorist bombing of a Berlin disco in 1986.

Despite those lingering suspicions it is likely that relations between Libya and the Western powers will continue to thaw, though not at any rapid rate.

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Robin Oakley CNN.com European Political Editor:
US and UK govt options

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Pressure to continue sanctions

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Abuzed Omar Dorda, Libya's Ambassador to the U.N., urged that in political terms a new page should be turned between Libya and the West. "Let's forget about the past and let's look to the future."

However, one British diplomat said that the key was Libya’s continued behaviour and its adherence to U.N. resolutions. These call for admission of responsibility for the acts of its agents, compensation for the Lockerbie victims’ families and a renunciation of terrorism.

“Compliance with the U.N. Security Council resolutions is the best judgement of Libya’s intentions. There is a process here and we will need to assess it over a period of time.”

Libya is believed to have kicked out some of the terrorist groups whom it used to allow to train on its territory. It has released some information over Lockerbie. But it has not admitted responsibility.

Gadhafi did pay compensation of $27.5 million to France for a French airliner blown up over Niger in 1989 (while denying responsibility for the act). But Libya has not offered compensation over Lockerbie.

Gadhafi's eventual agreement to give up Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah for trial, years after their indictment in Scotland and America, was seen as an effort to end his country’s isolation and classification as a rogue state.

It followed intervention by former South African President Nelson Mandela and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S.

In response to that the U.N. sanctions forbidding travel to Libya, arms sales and the supply of key spare parts for the oil industry were suspended.

The U.N. now has to decide whether to scrap those sanctions, to reimpose them or simply to leave them in a state of suspension.

British authorities say that dropping or reimposing the sanctions would require a specific vote in the U.N. Security Council. But even if the U.N. sanctions were eventually to be dropped the question then becomes one of whether the U.S. would drop its own separate trade and travel restrictions.

A U.S. diplomatic security team was sent to Libya last year to make an assessment of safety factors if such an action were to be taken, but that was under the Clinton administration. President Bush will not want to look a soft touch in his early days in the White House.

Against that there is another factor. As experience with Saddam Hussein has shown, sanctions policies have a limited life and fall into disrepute as they begin to be evaded.

Countries in the Organisation of African Unity have campaigned for sanctions to be removed in Libya’s case. So has the charismatic Mandela, who remains grateful to Gadhafi for his support in the fight against apartheid.

Straws in the wind have included a meeting between Gadhafi and French President Jacques Chirac and the attendance of a French minister at a Tripoli trade fair. The clincher may be that Western companies are queuing to get back into Libya and resume oil business.



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RELATED SITES:
United Nations Security Council
Organization of African Unity
LibyaOnline

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