REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Trading With a Terrorist
Will the State Department let Gadhafi off the hook?
It's been 15 years since Libyan terrorists downed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, ending 270 lives; four years since Libya finally turned over two suspects in the bombing; and two years since a Scottish court in the Netherlands convicted one of them. Fifteen years is a long time, but it's not long enough for the U.S. to let Libya off lightly.
Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi is ready to make up, so badly that he's negotiating a deal with the U.S. State Department to pay families of the victims $2.7 billion, or $10 million each. In return for the money and an official admission of culpability in the terrorist attack, international sanctions would be lifted and State might even drop Tripoli from its list of terrorist regimes. The cash would be kept in an escrow account for the families and be dispersed in stages as Libya passed each international test.
This diplomatic/compensation framework was put in place by the Clinton Administration. And even before September 11, when state-sponsored terrorism was thought to be a law-enforcement issue, the trade had an unpleasant aroma. But post-9/11, the plan will tell the world's terrorists that if they wait long enough and pay enough they can get away with it. Would the U.S. now accept $30 billion from Osama bin Laden and call it even?
Not that Gadhafi has any intention of keeping up his end of the agreement, which is supposed to include both accepting responsibility and explaining in detail how the bombing actually happened. His foreign minister said in April that Libya accepts only "civil responsibility" for the jetliner bombing. More recently, Gadhafi's son told CNN, "We regard ourselves innocent and had nothing to do with that tragedy." Apparently, the State Department is satisfied with an admission of guilt from the Libyan government but a denial of guilt by the totalitarian head of that government.
Libya is hoping to seal the deal as early as this week before the U.N. Security Council. If things go as planned, Britain would introduce a resolution to lift sanctions, and rather than veto the settlement the U.S. would abstain from voting. The abstention gambit is apparently a way for the Bush Administration to sanction the deal without having its fingerprints on the parchment.
One U.S. motive here is to help British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is under pressure in the wake of the Iraq War to reach out to other Arabs. Welcoming Libya back into the international community is considered one way to do that (and at the same time help him repair relations with his Labour Party, much of which opposed the war). For its part, the Bush Administration is under pressure from U.S. companies interested in Libya's substantial oil supply, which sanctions prevent them from tapping. And some families of the Lockerbie victims understandably want the money.
Everyone sympathizes with the families, but it's also fair to point out that Gadhafi's blood money is far more than the families of fallen GIs in Iraq will receive for their sacrifice in the war against terror. And some of the relatives understand the real price of a payoff. Dan Cohen, whose 20-year-old daughter, Theodora, died aboard Flight 103, recently told The Washington Post that "the United States should have nothing to do with [Libya] so long as that regime exists. Period."
What can't be ignored is that the same terrorist regime that perpetrated the Pan Am tragedy is still in power. U.S. intelligence suggests that Libya has not changed its ways and isn't planning to. The U.S. government believes that Iraqi scientists who worked under Saddam Hussein have sought sanctuary in Tripoli. Only last month, Undersecretary of State John Bolton referred to Libya as a "rogue state" that is secretly developing chemical weapons.
And only last week, the Washington Post reported that Liberia's Charles Taylor flew to Libya in July and returned with a cargo of ammunition and arms. Gadhafi and Taylor go back a long way. Taylor, who finally agreed to leave power yesterday, has turned things in Monrovia over to his vice president, Moses Blah, a man he first met in Libya's guerrilla camps as a warlord-in-training. In any case, this is hardly the behavior of a Libyan regime trying to turn a new leaf.
State isn't denying the reports, nor is it returning our phone calls. But this is a deal that deserves White House scrutiny. If President Bush's diplomats are going to strike deals with these kinds of governments, then he's going to have a credibility problem when he claims the U.S. doesn't negotiate with terrorists.
