Posted on 04/14/2006 12:20:55 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Twenty years after alleged Libyan-backed terror attacks spurred the United States to launch air raids against Tripoli, relations between the two are on the mend, if not yet fully normalized, the State Department says.
"We are, at this point, committed to the goal of full normalization," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday. "We have moved along that pathway."
The first steps on that path were taken several weeks after Libya announced in December 2003 it was abandoning efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Both sides moved toward reestablishing relations after a 24-year break, triggered by the 1979 sacking of the US embassy in Tripoli by protesters.
A US "interest section" opened in Tripoli on February 8, 2004. Then it was upgraded to a "liaison office" on June 28 that year, when relations were formally reestablished.
In September 2004, the United States lifted economic sanctions imposed against Libya in 1986 for its suspected role in several terrorist attacks.
It was in retaliation for the attack on a West Berlin discotheque frequented by US troops, which Washington blamed on Tripoli, that US military aircraft on April 15, 1986 bombed the residences of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi in Tripoli and Benghazi, killing his adopted daughter Hana.
But Libya continued to be implicated in major terror attacks. It was connected to the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 at the Karachi airport on September 5, 1986 by the radical Palestinian Abu Nidal gang.
In that incident, a Pakistani-American was fatally shot in the head in front of other passengers and his body thrown from the plane onto the tarmac.
The terrorists finally opened fire in the standoff and threw grenades into the plane's cabins, killing 19 more people.
Tripoli was also seen behind the December 21, 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. It took 11 years of negotiations before Kadhafi was persuaded to turn over for trial two key suspects, both of them working for Libyan Arab Airlines.
But the lifting of US economic sanctions on the country has opened the door for a new era of relations -- especially since the Libyan government selected US oil companies Occidental, Chevron and Amerada Hess in January 2005 to explore for Libyan oil and modernize the country's oil facilities, which had deteriorated under 18 years of international sanctions.
Libya has Africa's biggest oil reserves.
Still, the US diplomatic representative in Tripoli has not yet been elevated to the rank of ambassador.
And Libya remains on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, which it entered on December 29, 1979, after the US embassy sacking.
McCormack on Thursday said Libya would still figure on the latest annual State Department terror list, to be announced next week.
"There are certain requirements that need to be met under the law and regulations of the governing statute," the spokesman said. "We are not at this point ready to take them off of that list."
Among bilateral sticking points are the damages claimed by passengers and the families of the victims on Pan Am Flight 73, who are claiming 10 billion dollars in damages from Libya and members of the radical Palestinian group led by Abu Nidal for the hijacking.
Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, seen here on 10 April. Twenty years after alleged Libyan-backed terror attacks spurred the United States to launch air raids against Tripoli, relations between the two are on the mend, if not yet fully normalized, the State Department says.(AFP/File/Issouf Sanogo)
Painting by Ron Wong
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