TRIPOLI, Libya (CNN) -- Libya has accepted an offer to bring two suspects in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 to trial in the Netherlands, its foreign ministry announced Wednesday.

The decision could mean the end of economic sanctions imposed on the North African country for refusing to turn over the suspects. It came just hours after the U.N. Security Council rejected a Libyan request for more time to study the offer made by Britain and the United States.

Libya's response, read on state television, said Libya "announces its acceptance" of the offer, which was made Monday. However, it made no specific reference to handing over the suspects and stressed "the necessity to lift the sanctions."

Wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103

Pam Am Flight 103 was en route from Britain to the United States when a bomb blew it out of the sky in December 1988. All 259 people -- including 189 Americans -- on the aircraft were killed, as were 11 people on the ground in the small village of Lockerbie, Scotland.

For nearly 10 years, Libya has refused to hand over the suspects -- Libyan citizens Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah -- saying they would not get a fair trial in either the United States or Britain. Under the compromise plan, they would be tried in the Netherlands but before Scottish judges using Scottish law.

If convicted, the suspects would serve any prison sentence in Britain.

American and British officials reacted positively, but with a degree of skepticism, to the Libyan announcement.

"I welcome this statement, which looks like a positive development," said British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. "We shall need to study exactly what the Libyans have said."

Fhimah, left, and Megrahi

A Clinton administration official told CNN that the United States would also "consider this a positive development." But the official stressed that the United States considers the plan "non-negotiable" and that if the Libyans are serious, the "next step" would be to send the suspects to the Netherlands.

The offer marked a compromise on the part of the British and American governments, which previously had insisted that al-Megrahi and Fhimah be extradited for trial in either Britain or the United States.

While the Libyan government had initially said it would respond to the offer by Wednesday, it sent a letter Tuesday to the Security Council saying its judicial authorities needed more time to study the proposal. The Libyans also asked for international experts "more familiar with the laws of the states" to help them.

But the Security Council, scheduled to take up a resolution giving its backing to the agreement on Thursday, refused to give the Libyans more time.

The council must endorse the proposal because previous U.N. resolutions stipulated that the trial take place in the United States or Britain.

The resolution the council will consider calls for the suspension of sanctions on Libya once the suspects arrive in the Netherlands. But it also contains a condition that Libya comply fully with a French investigation into the bombing of UTA flight 772, which exploded over the Niger desert in September 1989, killing 170 passengers and crew.

The sanctions ban air travel to and from Libya, bar arms sales, freeze some assets abroad and limit sales of oil equipment.