OWN CORRESPONDENT, Tripoli | Sunday 9.00pm.
A SETTLEMENT of the Lockerbie affair is “close,” Libya’s foreign ministry said on Sunday, one day after United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan met with Libyan officials in a bid to put an end to the matter “once and for all.”
“A settlement of what is known as the Lockerbie affair is close, notably after the UN secretary general’s fruitful discussions with the Libyan foreign minister (Omar al-Montasser),” the ministry said in a statement published by the official Jana news agency.
Annan said his meeting with Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi had not yielded any firm agreement on the matter but that discussions with other officials had been “fruitful and positive.”
Annan is seeking to negotiate the extradition of two Libyans suspected of masterminding the December 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lokcerbie, Scotland, that left 270 people dead.
Tripoli repeatedly refused to extradite the men to stand trial in Britain or the United States, prompting the United Nations to impose sanctions against Libya in 1992.
After years of deadlock, Washington and London agreed in August that the two suspects could be tried in the Netherlands under Scottish law by Scottish judges. The move prompted the UN Security Council to decide to suspend the sanctions once the two suspects are delivered to the Netherlands for trial.
Although Libya accepted the proposal in principle, it has sought a number of guarantees before handing the two men over, most notably that the pair serve their sentences in the Netherlands if found guilty. –AFP