US, UK, Libya tackle Lockerbie

2003-08-11 18:51

Washington - US, British and Libyan diplomats are meeting in London on Monday to review a proposed deal under which Tripoli would accept responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and pay compensation to the families of the victims, State Department officials said.

The officials, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, said three mid-level State Department desk officers had travelled to the British capital for the meeting which comes amid hopes a deal may be reached this week.

"It is a working-level trilateral meeting to see where we are," one senior department official said, refusing to comment on whether Washington was optimistic that an agreement was imminent.

A second official echoed those remarks.

"This is a mid-level meeting," the official said. "We've been close before and nothing has happened so I am not going to speculate on what, if anything, might happen in London. We don't want to get our hopes up."

However, the London meeting comes as indications have grown in recent days that a settlement - which could pave the way for a lifting of UN and US sanctions against Libya - is in the works.

Last week, US officials said there were signs that Libya might formally accept blame for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 as early as Thursday in a letter to the UN Security Council.

The Pan Am Boeing 747 jet was blown up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21 1998, killing all 259 people on board plus 11 on the ground.

On Sunday, Time Magazine reported that Libyan leader Moamar Kadhafi had said in an interview that his country would take at least limited responsibility for the bombing.

And last Sunday, in an interview with the US television network ABC, Kadhafi said he believed the Lockerbie case was "about to be closed."

"The issue is over," Kadhafi said on ABC television. "The concerned parties, the legal experts, found a formula."

Libya's acceptance of responsibility for the bombing would follow immediately the signing of a $2.7 billion settlement deal with the families of the 270 victims, according to lawyers negotiating the deal.

Those lawyers and Libyan representatives have been meeting over the past week to finalize the set-up of an escrow account at Switzerland's Bank of International Settlements.

The lawyers have told their clients that the target date for signing the deal is August 14, according to relatives of the victims.

- AFP