Libya wanted to 'buy peace': PM - Compensation over Lockerbie
LONDON, Feb 24: Libya's prime minister said on Tuesday his country agreed to pay 2.7 billion dollars' compensation for the Dec 1988 bombing of a US airliner over Scotland in order to "buy peace" with the West.
Speaking on BBC radio, Shokri Ghanem also said Tripoli was not guilty of the shooting death of a British policewoman during a protest outside the Libyan embassy in London in April 1984.
Libya agreed in August last year to pay 2.7 billion dollars in compensation to the families of the 270 people killed when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up in the sky over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
It also wrote a letter to the UN Security Council saying it "accepts responsiblity" for Libyan officials involved in the bombing. The council responded by lifting international sanctions against Libya the following month.
"We thought it was easier for us to buy peace and this is why we agreed to compensation," Mr Ghanem told BBC radio's "Today" programme. "Therefore we said, 'Let us buy peace, let us put the whole case behind us and let us look forward'," he added.
Observers said Mr Ghanem's comments risked upsetting Tripoli's rapprochement with London. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said London would ask Tripoli to clarify the remarks.
"Obviously we will want to clarify what the (Libyan) prime minister said with the Libyan authorities," he said, adding that there was a "disparity" between the comments and Libya's earlier position.
In the Libyan capital, Foreign Minister Abdulrahman Mohamed Shalgham said Libya had accepted "responsibility for the actions and activities of its officials" with regards to the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
"We did not say we accepted responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am," Mr Shalgham added. Ties between Britain and Libya improved dramatically after Libyan leader Moamer Qadhafi announced in December that his country had given up its bid to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
Britain and Libya restored diplomatic relations in 1999, and Mr Ghanem on Tuesday said he hoped that British Prime Minister Tony Blair would go to Tripoli to see Qadhafi, and "the sooner the better".
"I'm sure that he will be surprised that we are just very open people, very nice people," he said. "He will enjoy his visit." But he indicated that Libya feels no guilt for the shooting of police constable Yvonne Fletcher, allegedly by a man inside the Libyan "people's bureau" in London's smart Saint James district.
The incident occurred during a protest by opponents of Moamer Qadhafi's government, with witnesses saying the shots clearly came out of a fourth-floor window in the embassy.
Libya agreed in July 1999 to pay compensation to her family, but never turned over the suspect. In his interview on Tuesday, recorded in Tripoli, Mr Ghanem said there was no evidence that Libya was to blame for Yvonne Fletcher's death, and that he considered the affair "settled". -AFP
