France unhappy with Lockerbie deal
2003-08-15 13:07
Paris - France was on Friday resisting a US-backed plan to lift UN sanctions against Libya in exchange for financial compensation for victims of the 1988 Lockerbie aircraft bombing, saying that victims of a later attack should also get a similar pay-out.
France "is not prepared to waver on this," foreign ministry spokesperson Cecile Pozzo di Borgo said on Thursday, referring to a demand that Libya provide more compensation for the families of 170 people killed in the 1989 blast that brought down a French airliner over west Africa.
US officials in Washington expressed outrage at the French reservations, and said Paris had threatened to use its veto at the UN security council to block a resolution lifting sanctions against Libya.
"The threat has been made and it is still there," one official said. "They're trying to get a better deal for their own people by punishing the Pan Am 103 families and it's absolutely outrageous."
Pan Am flight 103 was the US airliner which exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, killing all 259 people aboard and 11 on the ground.
Libya, two of whose nationals were sentenced and jailed over the attack, has now agreed to pay out $2.7bn to victims' families in exchange for a gradual lifting of international sanctions.
However France has said it wants similar compensation for the families of the 170 people who died when an airliner operated by the UTA company was blown out of the sky by a bomb over the Sahara Desert less than a year later, on September 19, 1989.
Libya has already paid €30m under what Tripoli and Paris last October called as "a definitive resolution" of the UTA matter, but the French foreign ministry insisted on Thursday that a "complementary settlement" should now also be made in light of the Lockerbie deal.
The initial sum Libya paid France went to only a third of the victims' families - only those kin who had registered as civil plaintiffs in a French trial of the case -- and each payment ranged from €3 000 to €30 000 euros, compared to the €8.8m to be paid to the families under the Lockerbie arrangement.
Due to the veto power it holds as a permanent member of the UN security council, France could potentially block a move to lift the sanctions on Libya.