U.S.: Libya begins $2.7bn transfer
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270 people were killed when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.
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WASHINGTON -- Libya has begun transferring $2.7 billion to an international bank as part of a settlement for the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270 people, a U.S. official said.
"The Libyans are beginning the transfer of funds. Because it is such a large sum, $2.7 billion, it will not be deposited all at once. Some will go in tomorrow. Some could go in Friday," the official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.
Last week Libya delivered a long-awaited letter to the United Nations accepting responsibility for the bombing.
Following the letter, a Libyan bank was to transfer $10 million for each victim's family into an escrow account at the Bank for International Settlements, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, as compensation for the bombing.
The letter and transfer are expected to prompt the United Nations to lift its sanctions against Libya, which have been suspended since 1999 when Libya handed over two suspects in the bombing.
On Monday, Britain asked the U.N. Security Council to end the sanctions.
Russia said Tuesday it backed Britain and the United States in thinking the time had come to scrap the measures, but France is insisting on a better deal for the families of 170 people killed the following year on a plane over Niger. (Full story)
A U.S. State Department official has said Libya's action on the Flight 103 bombing only "meets the minimum requirements" for satisfying Security Council resolutions and would not trigger a lifting of separate sanctions the United States has in place against Libya.
The United States is expected to keep Libya on its list of states that sponsor terrorism but will not oppose the lifting of U.N. sanctions.
Under the Lockerbie agreement struck last Wednesday, Libya agreed to pay up to $10 million each to families of the 259 on the plane and 11 on the ground killed in the bombing of Flight 103 en route to New York from London.
The U.S. sanctions were imposed in 1992 after Libya refused to turn over two Libyan officials accused of involvement in the bombing.
U.N. sanctions on Libya -- an air and arms embargo -- were suspended but not lifted in 1999 when Libya handed over two suspects for trial. One man was convicted and the other acquitted in 2001 after a trial in the Netherlands under Scottish law.
