New Libya-UTA flight deal 'agreed'
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President Chirac will meet Libyan Foreign Minister Shalqam Friday.
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PARIS, France (CNN) -- Libya is expected to sign a new compensation deal Friday with the families of 170 people killed in the 1989 bombing of a French UTA airliner, the chief negotiator for the families said.
Guillaume Denoix de Saint Marc would not disclose details of the deal, but said he expects a formal signing ceremony on Friday in Paris.
The new deal follows by four months Libya's taking of responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and agreement to pay $2.7 billion to the families of the 270 people killed in the bombing -- $10 million per family.
Denoix de Saint Marc, whose father was killed in the UTA bombing over the West African nation of Niger, told CNN he was pleased with the new agreement, but the "amount is much less than Lockerbie families received."
In 1999, Libya paid the UTA victims' families nearly $34 million, or about $200,000 apiece, after a French court convicted six Libyans in absentia for the bombing.
Denoix de Saint Marc said the private signing ceremony is to take place around 10 a.m. Friday (4 a.m. ET), and Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam and his French counterpart, Dominique de Villepin, are to hold a news conference after the deal is signed.
Shalqam also is scheduled to meet with French President Jacques Chirac later Friday.
Chirac was quoted Thursday as telling the French diplomatic corps that France hopes the "expected settlement in the dispute over the UTA DC-10 will allow Libya to completely return into the dynamic of cooperation between the two sides of the Mediterranean."
A partial deal had been reached in September, clearing the way for the United Nations to lift its long-standing sanctions against Libya that same month.
France, which has veto power as a permanent member of the Security Council, had threatened to veto that vote if a new deal was not reached with the families of UTA victims. In the months since then, the talks have been bogged down in tough negotiations.
Denoix de Saint Marc said negotiations intensified in the past two days with the Gadhafi International Association for Charitable Organizations, a foundation headed by one of the sons of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
The agreement comes at a time of unprecedented cooperation between the West and Libya, which recently agreed to end its weapons of mass destruction program and allow international inspectors into the country.
