Lockerbie Bombing Compensation Deal Said Imminent

Reuters.com ^ | 03/11/2003

[GeneD]

LONDON (Reuters) - Libya reached agreement with the United States and Britain on Tuesday to accept civil responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and compensate victims' relatives, a source close to the talks said. The deal would end a lingering dispute between the West and an Arab state shortly before a likely U.S.-led war against Iraq.

"History is in the making. A deal could be announced at any moment," the source said after U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns met Libyan and British officials in London.

Under the arrangement, Libya would compensate families of the 259 mostly American passengers and crew killed in the mid-air explosion of the Pan Am flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988 and 11 people killed on the ground.

Tripoli would pay up to $10 million per victim into a special trust account in return for a series of steps to remove U.N. and United States sanctions against it, the source said.

That would make the total value of the settlement roughly $2.7 billion if all conditions were met.

A Libyan intelligence agent, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, was convicted of the crime by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands.

The source said a breakthrough in the talks came when Libya was convinced that it would be accepting civil liability for the acts of a state employee but not criminal responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing.

The British Foreign Office had no immediate comment on the outcome of the talks.

In Washington, a State Department official confirmed the London talks had taken place and said: "It was a useful session and we made further progress."

But the official declined to give details. Family members of passengers killed on Pan Am flight 103 said the State Department had invited Lockerbie victims' families to a meeting on Wednesday for an update on the issue.

The source said Tripoli would initially pay $4 million per victim into an escrow account once United Nations sanctions against Libya, suspended after the Lockerbie trial, were formally lifted.

Another $4 million would follow if the United States removed its national sanctions against Libya, which remain in force.

A final $2 million would be paid if Washington also repealed its Iran-Libya Sanctions Act.

If the United States failed to lift those measures within eight months, Libya would pay only $1 million extra into the account, limiting its total payment to $5 million per victim.

The source said the main breakthrough came at a meeting last Friday at which the two sides finalized the exchange of legal drafts.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said in an interview in Newsweek magazine published in January that he had no problem with paying compensation for Lockerbie but the United States should also compensate Libyans for a 1986 bombing raid on Tripoli.

[persephone35]

Its nice that someone, somewhere took some level of responsibility for this horrible accident. But, all things considered, I would rather have my neighbor's brother, John, alive today. Unfortunately he kept postponing his flight home from Europe and ended his life on Pan Am 103.

[Tamzee]

Please tell your neighbor that many Americans will never forget that brutal tragedy or the victims. I have a bookmark about that flight and all the struggles the families have gone through just trying to see justice done. Your neighbor might not know of us out here still thinking of them all, but we are...