Libya ready for inspections
2003-08-04 07:53
Washington - Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi on Sunday said he was ready to have international inspectors verify that his country does not make weapons of mass destruction, in a bid to ease US concerns.
Kadhafi said he was prepared to invite inspectors from international agencies, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to visit Libyan industrial sites that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons.
"This is my proposal, yes. And I think this is the correct approach," he told ABC television news in a rare interview.
The Libyan leader also said that "the file is about to be closed" on the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing, for which he has never accepted full responsibility for the attack, leaving his country under US and UN sanctions.
In April, Libya accepted civil liability for the bombing of the Pan American Boeing 747 and agreed to pay $2.7bn in damages.
In the interview, he again declined to accept the blame for the bombing, which killed all 259 people onboard plus 11 on the ground.
Kadhafi said he was co-operating with US efforts to battle al-Qaeda, which described as a "cancer," while warning that the US campaign against Osama bin Laden was turning the terrorist network's fugitive leader into a "a prophet as far as the Islamic world is concerned."
"America made bin Laden a saint," he said.
Kadhafi also predicted the latest US efforts to negotiate a Middle East peace deal would fail like all the previous efforts, which he dismissed as "just for propaganda."
"The area is too small. It cannot support two states" for Israelis and Palestinians, he said.