Libya has come a long way - US
2005-08-23 11:22
Washington - The United States on Monday suggested Libya could expect long-sought diplomatic recognition from the US if it cleaned up its record on human rights and terrorism.
US officials gave no indication that an embassy would be opened in Tripoli within days, as Seif Al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the country's leader, Muammar Gaddafi, said in the Libyan capital.
But the trend clearly pointed in that direction. "If they continue to make progress along the pathway we have laid out, we, again, will meet their acts of good faith in return," said state department spokesperson Sean McCormack.
Temporary embassy facility
In March, the administration notified Congress it planned to establish full relations with the once outcast government by the end of the year, despite suspicions in Saudi Arabia that Libyan agents plotted to try to assassinate then-Crown Prince Abdullah in late 2003.
A US ambassador will be sent to Tripoli and 19 American diplomats working out of a hotel in Tripoli will move into a temporary embassy facility by the winter, then-acting undersecretary of state William J Burns told the house international relations committee.
Last weekend, senator Richard Lugar, chairperson of the senate foreign relations committee, said US and Libyan officials were negotiating the opening of the embassy and removal of the Libyan government from a state department list of countries that sponsor terror.
Sanctions remain in place
Diplomatic relations were severed in 1980 and US economic sanctions remain in place, costing Libya an estimated $30m a year in lost business.
Libyan terrorism reached a high point in 1988 with the bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Scotland in which 270 people were killed.
Gaddafi agreed, however, to pay $2.7bn in reparations to the victims' families and gave up the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, shipping much of Libya's weapons technology to the US.
"We have a dramatically different relationship with Libya than we had over recent history," McCormack said on Monday. "That changed relationship had its roots in the Libyan strategic decision to give up its weapons of mass destruction programme."
"In exchange for their acts of good faith we, in turn, have met their actions with our actions of good faith," he said. "And we are engaged with them now in a dialogue on a variety of issues," he said, citing human rights, democracy and terrorism.
"We have certainly come a long way from where we were in our relationship," he said.
- AP