LONDON: As it struggles to combat terrorist networks, the Bush administration quietly has built an intelligence alliance with Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi, a onetime bitter enemy the United States had tried for years to isolate, topple or kill.

Qadhafi has helped the United States pursue Al Qaeda’s North African network by turning radicals over to neighbouring pro-Western regimes.

The rapprochement is partially the result of a decade of efforts by Qadhafi to improve relations with the United States and end international sanctions imposed on Libya for bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. But it also reflects the fact that Libya and the United States regard extremism as a common enemy. Even though he long supported radical causes, Qadhafi views religious militants as a menace to his secular regime.

Critics charge that the partnership with Libya, like those with regimes such as Sudan, Uzbekistan and Egypt, illustrates how Washington is allowing its war on terrorism to trump its effort to promote democracy and human rights in the Muslim world. They say that in cooperating with Qadhafi, the United States has strengthened his oil-rich regime and permitted him to crack down on political opponents, some with democratic credentials far stronger than his own.

Qadhafi’s point man for dealing with Washington is his head of foreign intelligence, who is banned from entering the United States because of his suspected involvement in terrorist acts, including the Lockerbie bombing. He also is suspected of taking part in a plot to kill Saudi Arabia’s ruler.

Libyan dissidents, who for years thought they could count on American support, have been deeply disappointed by the Bush administration.

“Qadhafi was considered to be a dictator and terrorist, and Libya was a rogue regime,” said Ashur Shamis, a prominent London-based Libyan exile and longtime proponent of democratic reform.

“Suddenly, everything has changed. The Americans no longer want to see Qadhafi’s regime destabilized,” he said. “Opponents have written off the possibility of receiving tangible political support from the United States.”

Libya’s decision in 1999 to turn over suspects in the Pan Am bombing, which killed 270 people, and, 4 1/2 years later, its renunciation of developing nuclear weapons have been the most public examples of its effort to improve relations. But experts say Qadhafi already had been moving in that direction because sanctions had crippled his economy and generated high unemployment, shortages of consumer goods and political discontent.

Qadhafi came to power in 1969 at 27, when he led a coup that overthrew Libya’s pro-Western monarchy. A decade later, the Carter administration placed Libya on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, where it remains.

In April 1986, US warplanes attacked Libya in retaliation for the bombing of a Berlin disco that killed three people, including two US soldiers. The US attack killed more than 60 people, including Qadhafi’s 15-month-old daughter, and nearly killed the Libyan leader himself.

Meanwhile, the CIA funnelled millions of dollars in money and equipment to anti-Qadhafi rebels. Qadhafi began reaching out to the United States as early as the mid-1990s, expelling or severing ties with radical groups. In April 1999, he surrendered two Libyans who were suspected in the Pan Am bombing. The Clinton administration responded by launching secret talks with Tripoli.

The thaw accelerated in January 2001 with the inauguration of President Bush and the conviction of Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi of murder in the Lockerbie case. A Scottish court said Megrahi had acted ‘in furtherance of the purposes of ... Libyan Intelligence Services’, but it acquitted a second man. In 2003, Libya agreed to a $2.7 billion payout to families of the Lockerbie victims.

American oil companies, anxious to invest in Libya, heavily lobbied the Bush administration to improve ties. Relations improved markedly after the Sept. 11 attacks, which Qadhafi immediately condemned.—Dawn/LAT-WP News Service