Desire For Oil Brings Final Accord

Earlier this month, Libya paid $1.5 billion into a fund to compensate the families of American victims of terror attacks in the 1980s linked to that country. It cleared a final hurdle to complete normalization of ties between Tripoli and Washington.

In exchange for the payment, President Bush signed an executive order restoring the Libyan government’s immunity from terror-related lawsuits and dismissing compensation cases that were pending. Basically, it is a new day, a clean slate, for Libya – which once was considered the “worst of the worst” terrorist regimes in the world.

In an interview with the Associated Press, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called it “a laudable milestone” giving “a measure of justice to families of U.S. victims of terrorism and clearing the way for continued and expanding U.S.-Libyan partnership.”

The money will go into a $1.8 billion fund that will pay $1.5 billion in claims for the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the 1986 bombing of a German disco. Another $300 million will go to Libyan victims of U.S. airstrikes ordered in retaliation for the disco bombing.

The Pan Am 103 bombing went unsolved, officially, for more than a decade. No one who saw it could ever forget little bits of airplane blown across miles of Scottish countryside. And there were no real answers for years.

Now, 20 years after the bombing, Libya is poised to return to the international scene as a possible business partner to the United States. Desire to do business with oil-rich Libya and a desire to finally resolve the bombings led to the compensation fund.

But coming up with the money wasn’t simple – both Libya and the U.S. have vowed not to use taxpayer money for the victim funds. Libya has solicited donations from private businesses to help cover its share of the costs. The Bush administration has not said where the $300 million to Libya to compensate for that country’s victims will come from.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., welcomed the final payment from Libya. He has been a critic of Libya’s slowness to pay. “American victims and their families have waited decades for Libya to pay for its deadly acts of violence and today they have received long-overdue justice,” he said in a statement.

A first payment to the fund was received in early October, days after the U.S. trade office was opened in Libya’s capital city. It was followed by a historic visit there by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

U.S.-Libyan relations hit a low point in the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan wrangled with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Remember Reagan calling him the “mad dog of the Middle East?” Gadhafi was on the news nearly nightly in the 1980s, threatening the U.S. or one of his neighbors. But Gadhafi renounced weapons of mass destruction and terrorism in 2003. He appears to be making good on all his commitments, down to having his country pay $1.5 billion in compensation to victims.

There was an earlier plan to have Libya pay $8 million to each of the families of the victims of the Pan Am bombing, but none for the families of victims killed in the 1986 bombing at the La Belle disco in Berlin.

In August, Libya and the U.S. agreed to a new plan to compensate for all 1980-era claims. That includes all 269 passengers and crew on the Pan Am flight, which included 180 Americans, plus 11 people who were killed on the ground. Three people, including two American soldiers, were killed and 230 people were wounded in the disco bombing.

And Libya sought, and got, compensation for the retaliatory attacks Reagan ordered. Libyans say those attacks killed 41 people, including Gadhafi’s adopted daughter.

But why now? Why 20 years later?

American firms want to do business in Libya, where we are lagging behind our European counterparts. Libya has proven oil reserves that are the ninth largest in the world.

This is of little consolation for the family members of victims who have waited 20 years for resolution, an admission of guilt, an apology or compensation. Today those family members will see financial recompense for their loss.

And soon they will see the United States doing business will Libya. We hope, for everyone’s sake,  Gadhafi and his followers have earnestly changed.