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Libya leaves talks on airline bombing compensation
Negotiations with Libya on compensation for a 1989 airline bombing were suspended Tuesday, with members of the Libyan delegation announcing they would return home without a deal, a representative of victims’ families said. It was not clear why the talks broke off.
Come now!
Guillaume Denoix de Saint Marc, who represents families of the 170 people killed in the attack on the French UTA airline, a DC-10 jet, said his group was "waiting for the misunderstanding to be resolved to start negotiations again.
There was no misunderstanding, the French and the Libyans understand each other perfectly!
"We’re sorry that the negotiations were interrupted because they were advancing in a constructive way," he said in a telephone interview, without giving details of what went wrong. LCI television suggested Libya felt the French government was not holding up its end of a partial deal signed last month. Libya’s representatives, from a charity foundation headed by one of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi’s sons, arrived Monday night in Paris. With talks suspended, they announced their intention to leave Wednesday, Denoix de Saint Marc said. "I don’t think there’s a definitive break between the families and the delegation," he said. The talks come more than a month after the partial deal, signed September 10, had cleared the way for a United Nations vote that lifted 11-year-old sanctions against Libya, long seen as a rogue state that sponsored terrorism. That accord did not set a compensation amount.
Sanctions are lifted, so Muammar doesn't have to worry about it anymore...
Under the deal, Libya and victims’ families were meant to have reached a definitive agreement by Saturday. As the deadline was about to pass without a pact, French President Jacques Chirac warned on Saturday that Libyan-French relations would suffer if Libya did not follow through on its promises. Victims’ families are seeking additional compensation on top of $33 million that Libya already paid in 1999. Libya has offered an extra $1 million for each family, but Denoix de Saint Marc has said that is not enough.
Wonder why?
The French government, while not directly involved in the talks, had congratulated the two sides Tuesday on their return to the negotiating table. "We hope that the resumption of these negotiations can conclude as quickly as possible," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous.
If it weren’t for the families involved, I’d hope for a prolonged, bloody draw between the French and the Libyans. They deserve each other.
Posted by: Steve White 2003-10-16
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=19942