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Libyan rejects lockerbie blame { February 25 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-uslibya25feb25,1,7439204.story?coll=la-headlines-worldhttp://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-uslibya25feb25,1,7439204.story?coll=la-headlines-world
Libyan Rejects Lockerbie Blame
Nation's prime minister contradicts the official admission of guilt in the 1988 jetliner bombing over Scotland. U.S. halts lifting of its travel ban.
By Sonni Efron
Times Staff Writer
February 25, 2004
WASHINGTON — Libya's prime minister denied Tuesday that his country was responsible for the 1988 airliner bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, prompting the Bush administration to call off a scheduled announcement that the United States would lift its decades-old ban on travel to Libya.
The unexpected remarks by such a senior Libyan official came as the administration was prepared to give Libya its first tangible reward for its repudiation of terrorism and its decision in December to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
Prime Minister Shokri Ghanem said Tripoli had agreed to pay $2.7 billion in damages to the families of the Lockerbie victims only to "buy peace." Libyan agents were accused in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, in which 270 people died.
Although the administration abruptly canceled a briefing on the lifting of the travel ban, senior U.S. officials said they had been assured by the Libyan government Tuesday morning that the prime minister's remarks, made in an interview with the BBC, did not reflect official policy and that a retraction would be forthcoming.
As of Tuesday evening, however, there had been no statement from Tripoli.
Libya formally accepted responsibility for the bombing in a letter to the United Nations Security Council in August, and international sanctions were later lifted on the basis of that admission. A State Department spokesman said Ghanem's remarks were "impossible to reconcile" with that government statement.
Ghanem told the BBC that Libya had refused to apologize for the Lockerbie bombing because that was not part of the deal.
He added, "We reached an agreement in which we felt that we bought peace."
British officials, like their U.S. counterparts, said they had no reason to believe that Libya had changed course.
"There wasn't any ambiguity in the letter they sent to the U.N. Security Council accepting responsibility for the actions of its officials," a British official said.
Nevertheless, Britain will be seeking "clarification" of the discrepancy in statements, the diplomat said.
A senior State Department official said Tripoli had assured Washington that the prime minister was "off the reservation" and that his remarks did not reflect Libyan government policy. Libyan officials said Ghanem was new to the government and had not been involved in any of the protracted negotiations that led to Libya's acceptance of responsibility for the bombing.
"It's annoying and it's unhelpful, but is it a shift in policy? We don't think so," the official said.
David Mack, a former U.S. diplomat who served two tours in Libya, said Ghanem was considered a moderate in Libya and "as respectable as you can be."
"Whether he was speaking authoritatively or not, I don't know, but he is not in any sense a radical," said Mack, now at the Middle East Institute in Washington. "So either he did simply misspeak, or there is some ambivalence in their position that has to be explored before the travel ban can be lifted."
Ghanem is an experienced technocrat who spent many years abroad, earning a doctorate at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and later working as an economist in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna before being drafted as economics minister and then prime minister.
He is a "very, very smart man," which makes the timing of his statement — though not the substance — perplexing, said Lisa Anderson, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, who was a classmate of Ghanem's at Fletcher.
In 2001, a high-ranking Libyan intelligence official was convicted in the Netherlands of having put a suitcase bomb aboard Flight 103. A second Libyan was acquitted. Libya accepted civil but not criminal responsibility for the actions of its officials, but Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi denied any role in the bombing.
Ghanem has said that Libya wants U.S. economic sanctions lifted by May or it may not complete compensation payments to the families of the victims.
Anderson said many Libyans believe that the case against the Lockerbie suspects wasn't proved, and some are skeptical of the government's decision to relinquish its nuclear programs. Ghanem's remarks may have been authorized by the Libyan leadership to appease such domestic critics, she said.
"Either they're doing it because they do need to reassure domestic constituencies that they haven't completely capitulated to the U.S., or they're doing it because they've made a mistake — or both," she said.
The United States barred Americans from traveling to Libya in 1981 when Washington cut diplomatic relations.
Lifting the ban was to be Washington's first step toward easing the North African nation's isolation and economic stagnation.
Since December, the Bush administration has hailed Libya's decision to abandon its nuclear weapons program and allow inspections by the international community. Libya has even allowed U.S. officials to move sensitive nuclear equipment and documents to Oak Ridge, Tenn., where experts are poring over them in an effort to unravel the global network that provided Pakistani nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
President Bush repeatedly has urged other "rogue" nations to follow Libya's lead in renouncing nuclear arms, promising they could return to the international community and the world trading system.
The administration has been cautious not to move too quickly toward a promise to normalize relations with Kadafi, a man U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell recently referred to as a dictator.
However, the State Department has assigned four officials to work in a Libya "interests section," which would assist Americans traveling to Libya and explore the renewal of broader ties.
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