Libya backs bomb compensation deal
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Gaddafi spoke with French President Jacques Chirac on Sunday.
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PARIS, France (Reuters) -- Libya has agreed to increase compensation to families of the 170 people killed in the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over Africa, a lawyer advising Libya told Reuters on Sunday.
"The deal is done, the terms will be announced tomorrow. The representatives of the families have left Libya and are on their way home," said Saad Djebbar, a London-based lawyer who also worked with Libya over the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.
There was no immediate confirmation of a deal from either French authorities or relatives of the victims. Some 170 people were killed in the 1989 bombing of the UTA airliner over Niger.
The Foreign Ministry said it could not immediately confirm the deal. However, it said President Jacques Chirac spoke to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Sunday.
And in an anniversary address to the nation Sunday, Gaddafi told Libyans: "The problem over the UTA case is over and the Lockerbie case is now behind us. We are opening a new page in our relations with the West."
France has been hoping a deal could be struck to avoid a confrontation at the United Nations Security Council, where it has threatened to block a British resolution calling for an end to U.N. sanctions on the Libya after the North African state accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing.
Libya this month agreed to pay $2.7 billion to families of the Lockerbie victims.
Djebbar told Reuters on Saturday: "I am sure that if President Chirac picked up the phone today and told Colonel Gaddafi that France would not veto the resolution, or better still that it would vote for the resolution, that this will pave the way for better conditions for the families."
The Security Council looked set for a quick vote to lift U.N. sanctions on Libya, but delayed it while France made a last-minute demand for a supplement to the $34 million compensation Tripoli has already paid the UTA victims.
Libya never accepted blame for the 1989 UTA explosion, but agreed to pay compensation after France found its agents guilty.
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