US Lockerbie families slam France over veto threat (new info)

Agence France Presse ^ | August 15, 2003

[Paul Atreides]

The Fr*nch have a real talent for endearing themselves to others. /sarcasm

[Shermy]

Ping.

IMO new interesting info: Chirac already made a settlement with Libya.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

This is new info. Sounds like the French want to reneg.

[billhilly]

Bomb the bastards. Frog legs for the world.

[Dog]

Call France's bluff.

Make them veto it.

[talleyman]

"Bomb the bastards" bump!

[dinok]

I'm shocked...

[ChewedGum]

I'm shocked...

Didn't France already surrender settle with Libya a few years back?

Gum

[July 4th]

Correct order? : France makes deal. US makes better deal. France is angry that the US got a better deal. France thus intends to screw US bombing victims because of French incompetence in negotation.

It's like the story where a man is granted a wish to ask for anything he wants. The catch is that his neighbor will get double. So the man asks to be blinded in one eye.

[blam]

POS FRench.

[CdMGuy]

Put the measure before the Security Council and watch the Frenchies. They will abstain because they know a veto would make them look like the turds they truly are.

[Shermy]

Yeah, but at least the French press is reporting these angles.

Here's more, I believe the Libyans this time:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030815/wl_uk_afp/france_libya_lockerbie_030815181849

NDJAMENA (AFP) - Libya accused France of blackmail after Paris threatened to block a deal lifting UN sanctions in exchange for compensation for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, demanding a matching payout for the bombing of a French airliner.

"France is using pressure and blackmail and we do not accept this," said Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Raman Shalgham.

He was speaking a day after France threatened to block the lifting of sanctions against Tripoli, a move which would undermine the compensation deal in which Libya has agreed to pay out 2.7 billion dollars (2.4 billion euros) to Lockerbie victims' families.

... France, which has a veto on the UN Security Council, has made clear it wants similar compensation for the families of 170 people killed when a plane operated by French airline UTA was blown up over the Sahara desert the following year.


But the Libyan foreign minister dismissed the French demand. "We have reached a comprehensive, global agreement with the Americans, the British and the lawyer for the families to resolve this problem," Shalgam said, adding that Libya had made its position clear to French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.


"From now on it's between the French and the Americans. If the French want to use their veto, it's their decision."


Libya has already paid 30 million euros (33 million dollars) in compensation for the UTA bombing -- a fraction of the Lockerbie payout -- in what Tripoli and Paris described last October as "a definitive resolution" of the matter.


But the French foreign ministry said on Thursday a "complementary settlement" should now be made to match the Lockerbie deal, adding that this was "an indispensable condition for the permanent lifting of sanctions against Libya".

.....

...The settlement dwarfs the payout to around 1,000 bereaved relatives of victims of the French passenger jet bombing -- each of which received between 3,000 and 30,000 euros (3,400 and 34,000 dollars) under the deal struck in 1999.

Ben Aryeah said it was a "matter of deep regret" that the UTA families had obtained such a comparatively small settlement.

"But that's a question that the Quai d'Orsay (French Foreign Office) has to answer and the people who represented the relatives in the negotiations with Libya," he said.
.....

[MattAMiller]

Such bullying unilateralism. I'm glad we're so much more sophisticated over here.

[Tacis]

Look at it from the French point of view. Chirac recently lost a major source of personal, seceret, and untaxed revenue when Saddam was ousted. Even if he, personally, only got the same percentage cut from the new Libyan money as he did ffrom the original settlement, it would go a long way in covering the missing Iraqi money.

Chirac is going to have to pay a lot of EU politicians if he is going to get another profitable job after retiring from the French government. So, it is not that Chirac is being intenionally obstructionist like, say, a democrat, it is just the he and his family and his mistress and their family and his girl friends and their families really do need the cash.

[.cnI redruM]

The only people I can think of who like the US less than Jacques Chirac are OBL, Saddam Hussein and Howard Dean. France has no right to intentionally deprive the victims of the Lockarbie Bombing of their compensation. This is a detestable cheap shot. It should never be forgotten or forgiven.

[JayNorth]

The French policy is to undermine or obstruct the U.S. regardless of the issue at hand. If the U.S. is trying to accomplish something the French will sabotage it. That's the facts of life, folks. They've been doing it for years.

[AMNZ]

Let me get this right. The French, who repeatedly voted for continuation of U.N. sanctions on Iraq while, at the same time, repeatedly violating those sanctions and providing Iraq with prohibited military armaments, proposes to veto the dropping of sanctions on Libya after it has settled with other members of the U.N. on matters that caused the imposition of those sanctions.

One might conclude that those members of the U.N. that have settled with Libya might enforce those sanctions with the same vigor that the French enforced the Iraqi sanctions.

[breakem]

French vs Lybia hard to pick a dog in that fight.