Libya's dramatic turnabout

LIBYA, once branded an international pariah by the US, is off the American and Western hook, not simply for now but for the foreseeable future since Tripoli's newfound relationship with Washington does not seem to be tactical but a key objective of a dramatic shift in policy, writes PV Vivekanand.
By agreeing to scrap the country's programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction and then opening up all WMD facilities without reservation to American and British inspectors, Libyan leader Muammar Abu Minyar Al Qadhafi launched the final steaps of a process that brought his country in from the cold into the international scene.
By no means the WMD gesture on its own helped Libya. Since 1999, it had followed a series of steps, beginning with the surrender of two Libyan suspects for trial on charges of engineering the 1988 bombing of an American airliner over the town of Lockerbie in Scotland and agreeing to pay compensaton to the victims of the blast after one of the suspects was found guilty and given a life sentence to be served in a Scottish prison.
The US has now announced that it is easing the sweeping sanctions it imposed on Libya in 1986 and again in 1996. It clears the way for US imports of Libyan oil as well as for American oil companies to invest money as well as technology in the country.
Oil experts say Libyan production is now only half of what it was in its peak year of 1970 when it reached 3.3 million barrels a day.
Libya had been denied American oil technology and spare parts for the oil industry since the day the sanctions were imposed.
Many countries scaled down diplomatic relations with Libya. The country's civil aviation sector was closed for external flights.
The 1996 Libya sanctions law prohibited US companies from investing in Iran and Libya. Sanctions also could be applied under the law to foreign companies that made investments in either country in excess of $20 million. In 2001, the US Congress extended the law for an additional five years. In the eight years the law has been in effect, no foreign company has been sanctioned.
The UN suspended ts sanctions imposed on Libya following the surrender of the Libyan suspects in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, but the US maintained its sanctions not only until Tripoli came up with £2.7 billion in compensation for the
bombing victims but also until a deal was reached on the country's WMD.
In In February, the United States dropped its 23-year ban on travel to Libya by American citizens and permitted them to spend money in the country.
US Assistant Secretary of State William Burns visited Libya early this year.
Washington is expected to announce the resumption of diplomatic relations with Tripoli soon in a dramatic shift from the days when the US considered Libya among its top five enemies around the world.
Today, Libya is poised to join and perhaps even lead the list of American friends in North Africa.
Having announced his decision to take his country out of the Arab League, which he accuses of inefficiency and disorientation, Qadhafi has been projecting Libya as African rather than Arab and then as a country totally committed to peaceful and diplomatic means in dealing with international relations.
As Qadhafi reaffirmed during a visit to Brussels this week — his first visit to Europe in 15 years — Libya is calling on all countries to abandon their WMD programmes and embrace the path of dialogue to settle disputes.
That the US is extremely pleased with the course of events was evident in the words of White House spokesman Scott McClellan when he announced the easing of US sanctions against Libya.
"Through its actions, Libya has set a standard that we hope other nations will emulate in rejecting weapons of mass destruction and in working constructively with international organizations to halt the proliferation of the world's most dangerous systems," McClellan said. "Libyan actions since Dec. 19 have made our country and the world safer."
It was on Dec.19 last year that Libya announced it was abandoning its WMD programmes and opening up all its WMD facilities for international inspection.
With the sanctions removed, Libyan students are eligible to study in the United States, subject to school admission and Washington will drop its objection to Libya's attempts to enter the World Trade Organistion.
In the meantime, Libyan assets held in the United States or by US banks will remain frozen, but a lifting of the freeze could follow soon.
The easing of sanctions did not include reinstating direct air service between the US and Libya, but includes expanded diplomatic relations. Washington will establish a U.S. liaison office in Tripoli, pending congressional notification and Libya is expected to send diplomats to the US soon.
Libya remains on the the US State Department's list of countries that Washington sees as "sponsors of international terorrism."
A ban on US exports to Libya under the terrorism list prohibit the sale of so-called dual-use goods — items that could be used for military purposes — such as ammunition and some goods related to civil aviation.
McCellan appeared to allude to the possibility of removing Libya from the list when he said Tripoli had "taken significant steps eliminating weapons of mass destruction programs and longer range missiles, and has reiterated its pledge to halt all support for terrorism. "
"In the last two months, the government of Libya has removed virtually all elements of its declared nuclear weapons programme, signed the IAEA Additional Protocol, joined the Chemical Weapons Convention, destroyed all of its declared unfilled chemical munitions, secured its chemical agent pending destruction under international supervision, submitted a declaration of its chemical agents to the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, eliminated its Scud-C missile force, and undertaken to modify its Scud-B missiles," the White House said.
That is indeed impressive tribute to Qadhafi, who, since assuming power in 1969, had propagated a distinct political system of his own — the Third International Theory.

'No regrets'

He had tried to spread his theory in the region and elsewhere in the world, and Libya had been accused of links with most European extremist groups including Northern Ireland's Irish Republican Army, Germany's Bader-Meinhof and Italy's Red Brigades as well as various Palestinian and Arab groups in the Middle East.
Qadhafi has defended his actions, saying on Wednesday he "absolutely does not regret the past."
"We were in a phase of fighting for emancipation, liberation....
We were accused of being terrorists, but that is the price we had to pay," he told French radio while in Belgium "If that is terrorism, then we are proud to be terrorists because we helped the liberation of the (African) continent," he said.
"I absolutely do not regret the past," he said.
He also defended Libya's support for African nationalist "freedom fighters".
"We financed, trained, formed these freedom fighters (for national movements), and this is something we are proud of," he
said. "It was for Africa, it was because of Africa."
In a speech to Belgium's parliament, also on Wednesday, he described terrorism as "the result of the imbalance in the world at the moment" and suggested that so-called terrorists had no other course of action.
"The terrorist is one who is forced to defend himself to win back rights by brutal means, terrorist means, because there are no other means," he said.

Unexpected moves

American and European diplomats and observers have expressed surprise over Libya's drmatic shift in policy. They say that they were seeing Libya doing things that nobody expected it to do.
"We have been justifiably cautious about re-engaging," said American State Department official. "We are proceeding carefully. But we have seen Libya do things nobody expected them to do, and they did them with a rapidity that has left some ... breathless."
Washington is said pressing Libya to settle outstanding disputes with Germany over the 1986 bombing of a disco in Berlinthat killed two US servicemen and a Turkish woman, and wounded 229, including 79 Americans.
Another outstanding issue is a dispute over compensation for victims of the bombing of a French UTA airliner.
On Jan.8, 2004, Libya also signed a $170 million compensation deal with the families of 170 people killed in the UTA bombing in 1989 over the Niger desert. But the French are seen to be unhappy over the deal.
Victims were of 17 nationalities, but France, with 54 dead, had the heaviest casualties.
Yet another is a feud with Bulgaria sparked by Libyan charges that Bulgarian doctors and nurses were responsible for infecting Libyan children in a hospital with HIV. The doctors are nurses are in detention but no verdict has been pronounced.
Within the region, Libya's dormant disputes include its claim of more than 32,000 square kilometres in southeastern Algeria and about 25,000 square kilometres in Niger.

Diplomatic boost

Following on the US footsteps, US President George Bush's staunchest transatlantic ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, gave a major boost to Libya's efforts to return to the international scene.
In March, Blair became the first British prime minister to visit Tripoli since Winston Churchill during World War II.
During the visit Blair lavished praise on Qadhafi for dismantling Libya's chemical, nuclear and biological programmes and said Europe was ready to do business with the country.
On a bilateral level, British police officers have travelled to Libya to continue investigations into the murder of policewoman Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in 1984. Police said then the shot that killed her came from inside the mission and after the recent visit to Libya they said they had identified the culprit. It is not known whether the man would be put on trial in the UK.
Some international experts believe Libya might be able to provide vital clues to militant groups in view of its past connections, but others are not so sure. The dissenters say Libya did not have anything to do with militant groups in the last decade or so and, as such, the information it might possess would be outdated.
In Brussels on Wednesday, Muammar Qadhafi announced that French President Jacques Chirac would visit Libya in June, adding that no firm date had yet been set.
Libyan Prime Minister Shukri Ghanim visited Paris last week and was received by Chirac.

'Safe for investment'

Parallel to diplomatic moves, Libya has also secured for itself a distinction equal to Scandinavia and much of Eastern Europe as being relatively safe from terrorism, organised crime and political violence.
This means that Libya is now seen as among the safest places to do business.
Among the oil companies expected to move into Libya are Marathon, ConocoPhillips, Amerada Hess and Occidental. All these firms have assets in Libya but have been barred by the US government from operating there since 1986.
International insurance brokerage Aon has given an excellent rating for Libya as an investment destination.
Says Martin Stone, Aon's director of counterterrorism and political risk:
"It's an exceptional situation where there are no indigenous terror groups and a highly controlled population, just as Iraq was until Saddam Hussein was kicked out. "Western interests in Libya are almost exclusively in the energy sector, which the Libyan government has a strong interest in protecting. That means there are few attractive targets for terrorists and easier countries for them to operate in.
Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell has signed a deal worth up to $1 billion for gas exploration rights off the Libyan coast.
British defence contractor BAE Systems is in talks with the Libyans over aviation projects.
Experts believe that Libya has to implement major reforms to streamline itself in the international econcomy scene.
According to the Western experts, socialist-oriented economy depends primarily upon revenues from the oil sector, which contribute practically all export earnings and about one-quarter of GDP.
These oil revenues and a small population give Libya one of the highest per capita GDPs in Africa, but little of this income flows down to the lower orders of society. Import restrictions and inefficient resource allocations have led to periodic shortages of basic goods and foodstuffs. The nonoil manufacturing and construction sectors, which account for about 20 per cent of GDP, have expanded from processing mostly agricultural products to include the production of petrochemicals, iron, steel, and aluminum. Climatic conditions and poor soils severely limit agricultural output, and Libya imports about 75 per cent of its food.
Higher oil prices in the last three years led to an increase in export revenues, which has improved macroeconomic balances but has done little to stimulate broad-based economic growth. Libya is making slow progress toward economic liberalisation and the upgrading of economic infrastructure, but truly market-based reforms will be slow in coming, say the experts.

Pro-American course

On the political front, Libya could be expected to follow a pro-American course. that signal came to be cemented in reports, albeit unconfirmed, that Libya would allow Israeli chess players to participate in this summer's world championships to be held in Libya. If true, it would be the strongest signal yet that Libya is too happy to set itself on a course designed in Washington in relations with Israel.
The Israeli Chess Association said World Chess Federation (FIDE) officials met this week with Qadhafi's son Mohammed and it was agreed that the World Chess Championships from June 18 to July 13 in Tripoli "will be open to all."
Mohammed Gadhafi, who heads the Libyan Olympic Committee, gave the undertaking in a a letter to Israel that ended intense behind-the-scenes negotiations over entry visas for players from counties without diplomatic relations with Libya, the association claimed.
As a result of Mohammed Qadhafi's letter, FIDE issued a statement saying that Libya had guaranteed entry visas and "consequently, all the games of the championship will be played in Tripoli, Libya and no parallel event will be organised in Malta."
There was no immediate confirmation by Libya of the Israeli claim.

Caution to the West

While offering lucrative business deals and an olive branch to Europeans during his visit to Belgium, Qadhafi also implicitly warned of the "days of explosive belts" if provoked by "evil" from the West.
Addressing Belgian business leaders and Belgian parliament members, Qadhafi argued against a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and said Europe should "should not be on the sidelines" in the peace process.
"It's important that Europe raises its voice about the tragedy in Iraq," he added later.
He criticised the decision by the US-led coalition to invade Iraq despite massive street protests in many countries as evidence of the failings of Western-style democracy.
"The American people and the English people were against the aggression in Iraq," he said through an interpreter.
"So in that case, the representation was false," he said, adding "representation is falsification."

With input from wire agencies