Tusken Raider with gaderffi stick.
Posted on 12/20/2003 8:13:08 AM PST by Momaw Nadon
TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya made clear on Saturday it wanted to come in from the cold after decades as a pariah state, and the United States and Britain promised to reward its decision to abandon banned weapons programs.
Almost 15 years to the day since its agents brought down a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Muammar Gaddafi's state opened the prospect of an end to sanctions and a return of U.S. oil firms with a pledge on Friday to stop seeking weapons of mass destruction. Britain said it had been close to an atomic bomb.
Some U.S. officials cautioned that Libya's move, the culmination of secret negotiations launched around the start of the U.S.-led Iraq war and announced less than a week after U.S. forces captured ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, still left it too early to say when, or if, Washington will lift sanctions.
Britain suggested Saddam's fate could have been different if he had cooperated. President Bush, who also accuses Iran and North Korea of seeking nuclear arms, said he hoped other leaders would follow the example of Gaddafi, a man once described by one of Bush's predecessors as a "mad dog."
European critics of the invasion of Iraq remarked pointedly that it showed peaceful diplomacy could bring about disarmament.
"Libya wants to solve all problems and we want to focus on development and advancing our country. This (weapons) program does not benefit our people or country," Foreign Minister Mohamed Abderrhmane Chalgam told Al-Jazeera television.
"We want to have ties with America and Britain because this is in the interest of our people," Chalgam said in the first televised comments by a top Libyan official on Tripoli's move.
PRAISE FOR GADDAFI
The announcement came ahead of Sunday's anniversary of the Christmas 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland that killed 270 people. British relatives of the victims welcomed the news that dialogue had brought disarmament, Tripoli's second dramatic step this year to rejoin the international community.
Libya was freed of broader U.N. sanctions this year after accepting responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and paying billions to victims' families. Washington left its sanctions in place, alleging Tripoli sought biological and chemical weapons.
"We want to defend our peoples' interests," Chalgam said.
U.S. warplanes bombed Tripoli in 1986 after the bombing of a West Berlin nightclub frequented by American soldiers. Gaddafi's home was hit in the U.S. attack and his adopted daughter killed.
Washington bans most economic activity and bars visits to Libya using U.S. passports without U.S. government permission.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw praised Gaddafi, labeled a "mad dog" by U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
"He needs to be applauded in unqualified terms for what he has done. I believe it is very statesmanlike and courageous," Straw told BBC radio on Saturday.
"If Saddam had come to us a year ago or more...then the situation in Iraq would have been a very different one."
Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, played down any link with Iraq in the timing of Libya's negotiations. "We started the cooperation before even the invasion of Iraq," he told CNN.
But he added: "It's a critical deal for Libya, because first of all we will get access to defensive weapons and no sanctions on Libyan arms imports any more. We will get access to the know-how and technology in sectors which were banned."
France welcomed the move but Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin urged Libya to "implement without delay" compensation for families of victims of a 1989 bombing of a French airliner.
BUSH, BLAIR DELIGHTED
U.S. officials said Libya's nuclear program was "much further advanced" than thought and it acknowledged cooperating with North Korea to develop long-range Scud missiles.
Libya said its move showed commitment to "building a world free of weapons of mass destruction and all sorts of terrorism."
Bush immediately praised Libya, saying: "Its good faith will be returned." He also said the United States and Britain would work to ensure Tripoli lived up to its commitments.
"Today's announcement shows that we can fight this menace through more than purely military means; that we can defeat it peacefully, if countries are prepared in good faith to work with the international community to dismantle such weapons," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a staunch U.S. ally.
Bush added: "I hope that other leaders will find an example in Libya's announcement today."
A senior U.S. official cautioned: "We are at the start. The Libyans want to work with the United States, but we take it one step at a time... We're not at the point of discussing how this affects the sanctions regime."
Lifting sanctions could allow U.S. oil companies back into Libya, where they once produced more than one million barrels per day (bpd) and where oil facilities could reach two million bpd within five years, the U.S. Energy Department says.
U.S. sanctions dating from 1982 and strengthened in 1986, ban the import of Libyan crude oil, as well as direct trade and commercial contracts, and keep U.S. firms out of Libya. U.S. companies Marathon, Amerada Hess and ConocoPhillips have extensive assets in the North African state, frozen in 1986.
A U.S. official said Libya approached the United States and Britain in mid-March and this led to visits to weapons sites in October and early December by U.S. and British teams.
(Additional reporting by Heba Kandil in Dubai and Bernard Woodall in New York)
Wrong euroweenies! It shows what our military can inspire in a tinhorn dictator's view of the future. He saw what went down in Afghanistan and Iraq. No doubt about it.
This is a remarkable development, and one we would like to see repeated elsewhere.
U.S. sanctions dating from 1982 and strengthened in 1986, ban the import of Libyan crude oil, as well as direct trade and commercial contracts, and keep U.S. firms out of Libya. U.S. companies Marathon, Amerada Hess and ConocoPhillips have extensive assets in the North African state, frozen in 1986."
What's it all about... Alphie?
Some of you may be upset and thinking that it is disgusting that in view of Lockerbie, that this turned out to be "All About Oil!"
Maybe it is... And maybe it aint. My point is that if you're upset in thinking about it this way, do NOT forget that the US EnvironMental Communutty and the Senators they control on the eastern seaboard will NOT allow new drilling on the barren north slope of Alaska!
Even if that is NOT the entire motivation involved here, it plays a major role.
And if you think, like so many liberals, that our government is automatically evil in pursuit of ANY advantageous position to acquire oil, then you are discounting the source of freedoms of many aspects of our society, such as the freedom to move about economically and freely.
This is pretty much true, even if one should happen to totally discount the idea that Libya was on the verg of becoming the second Muslim Nuclear Power, IMO.
However, I too am cautious! All we have so far is a "pledge!" A pledge from a second Arab leader who has crawled out of his hole, saying "I want to negotiate!"
Negotiation with these "madmen" is intensely risky business. It's nothing like the "negotiating" Reagan was able to do with Gorby & Gang! The Arab mind negotiates exactly like the liberal mind in a petulant, childish way!!!
Exactly. You cannot reason with unreasonable people.
'Fess up, clean up, rejoin the civillised world.
This would be an example of good behaviour and good results.
Once again, IF Qaddaffy really means what he says.
"Trust, but verify"
Verification, in Lybia can be as frustrating as it was in Iraq before this last war. Verification, like prevention of disease, crime and dishonesty can get so expensive that it hits a point of diminishing returns, in a hurry!
I love my country, but I fear my government the most whenever it starts spending money on "Prevention" concepts!
For one thing, prevention, by it's very nature, inhibits many freedoms!!!
Sorry for wandering off subject just a little, but your use of the word "verified," got me to thinking about the big picture and how it's a two edged sword, as well as how "prevention" can be abused here at home. Especially, how costly either of those words can be to implement, over time, here and abroad.
I don't mind inhibiting the Lybian madman, but I do mind freedom being inhibited here with things like "prevention" and "verification" by agents of government!!!
I go to DUh frequently, I enjoy their whining. Schadenfreude!
"Schadenfreude, those Germans have a word for EVERYTHING!" (Homer Simpson)
Reagan was only able to defeat Gorby because Gorby thought he was looking up the bigger barrel of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative gun, aka "StarWars!"
There is another force that Mao didn't mention. It's called "Persistence & Determination!" Both Reagan and G.W. Bush seem to have it, Bush especially when he gits pist!!!
Reagan did this wonderfully, as Bush is currently. :o)
In fact, I think they should move DemocratUnderground.com and all of it's servers and subscribers to the underground site recently vacated by Saddam Insane!!!
They could have Robin Williams come to the grand opening and yell "GOOD MORNING SPIDEY HOLE!!!
Tusken Raider with gaderffi stick.
How quickly it all changed when the Black Flags of the Mahdi appeared...the routing of armies...the slaughter in Har'toom
Its there still...from the driven machination of the Palestinian...to the machinery which works benath the feet of say cowardly ruler of Syria.
This machination...Al Harb...House of War,
finds its emergence repeatedly in History.
Maybe it is really gone for ever...
Then again...the voice of the see'r such as Nostradamus postures that this resolve will appear again to contend...the war of Terror which runs some near 27 yrs ..and see's the world changed by its final outcome.
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