June 01, 2008	Sunday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 26, 1429

WASHINGTON, May 31: The United States and Libya have agreed to try to resolve compensation claims from the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and other incidents Washington views as acts of terrorism by Libya, the State Department said.

The two governments this week held negotiations seeking to lay to rest events that have bedevilled relations for decades despite improvement in ties after Libya’s 2003 decision to abandon its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

“Representatives of the United States and Libya met in London May 28-29 to begin negotiations on a claims settlement agreement,” the two countries said in a joint statement issued by the State Department on Friday.

“Both parties affirmed their desire to work together to resolve all outstanding claims in good faith and expeditiously through the establishment of a fair compensation mechanism.”

Two people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named, said one idea that had been discussed would be the creation of a global compensation fund to pay families of the American victims of the incidents.

These include the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland which killed 270 people, including 189 Americans, and the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin disco in which two US servicemen were killed.

Libya, which was implicated in both incidents, agreed to pay the families of the Lockerbie victims $10 million per victim. It has already paid out $8 million per victim but has not made the final payment of $2 million.

A senior US official said Libya had sought the global settlement talks out of concern about US legislation that gave terrorism victims greater ability to collect damages from governments like Libya by having their assets frozen.

In addition, a US judge in January ordered Libya to pay billions of dollars in damages to relatives of the Americans killed in a 1989 suitcase bombing of a French airliner over Niger.—Reuters