Libya:
News and Views
October 1998
Friday: 30 October, 1998:
The U.N. Security
Council extended sanctions against Libya on Thursday for
another four months following warnings from the United
States that Tripoli should hand over immediately the suspects
in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
``If Libya fails to act, the United States and Britain will ask the
council to meet again in mid-December to consider Libya's
response,'' U.S. representative Peter Burleigh told reporters
after a closed-door council session. [Reuters]
Wednesday: 28 October, 1998:
British Foreign Secretary Robin
Cook insisted on Tuesday that Britain would not give in to a
Libyan demand that the two suspects in the Lockerbie
bombing should serve their sentences outside Scotland if they
were found guilty.
Cook, answering questions in the House of Commons about
progress in talks with Libya through U.N. Secretary--General
Kofi Annan, said: ``We have been able to respond positively
to all the issues raised by the Libyan legal team, with the
exception of their demand that if convicted the two accused
should not serve their sentence in a Scottish prison.'' [Reuters]
Wednesday: 28 October, 1998:
Yugoslavia and Libya
agreed on half a million tonnes of crude deliveries for the
needs of the Balkan federation, the state television Radio
Televisija Srbije (RTS) reported on Tuesday.
According to the deal, the crude is expected to be delivered
within the next 15 days, RTS said, without disclosing payment
details.
The deal was struck during a Yugoslav business delegation's
three-day visit to Libya, which ended on Tuesday, the report
said. [Reuters]
Tuesday: 27 October, 1998:
The U.N. General
Assembly on Monday adopted a Libyan-sponsored
resolution, aimed at the United States, calling for the
immediate repeal of laws that unilaterally impose sanctions on
companies and nationals of other countries.
The vote was 80 in favour, with only the United States and
Israel voting against, but an unusually large number of 67
delegations abstained.
The resolution is similar to one that the assembly adopted in
1996 by a vote of 56 to four, with 76 abstentions. Its
resolutions have no binding effect. [Reuters]
Tuesday: 27 October, 1998:
The U.S. government
said on Monday its latest offer to Libya on the Pan Am plane
blown up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988 would
lapse if it felt Libya was playing for time.
The United States would then resume a campaign for tougher
sanctions against Libya, already under a U.N. air embargo
because of its failure to hand over the two Libyans suspected
of planting a bomb on the airliner, Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright told relatives of the victims. [Reuters]
Saturday: 24 October, 1998:
The Palestinean newspaper Palestine Today "Falasteen al-Yawm" reports that the families of the Jordanian prisoners in Asqalan prison, in the West Bank, told a Jordanian Prisoners Committee that a Libyan national is jailed in Asqalan prison. The fanilies said they saw the Libyan national during their recent visit to the prison. They did not supply any information about the Libyan prisoner's name or why the Israelis arrested him.
Friday: 23 October, 1998:
Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi on Thursday left the southwest Tunisian city of Tozeur after a
three-day holiday which included talks with Tunisian
President Zaine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia's official news
agency TAP reported. TAP said al-Qadhafi, who made the trip at Ben Ali's invitation
to help recuperate from a hip operation, was seen off from
Tozeur by the Tunisian leader. Ben Ali and al-Qadhafi held a first meeting in Tozeur late last
Monday while members of the two governments held separate talks in Tunis and Tozeur on joint projects in energy
and trade exchanges, officials said. [Reuters]
Wednesday: 21 October, 1998:
A Cairo appeals court on
Tuesday set a date for the case of an American woman
seeking compensation for the 1993 disappearance of her
Libyan dissident husband to be heard by another court.
Baha al-Emary filed suit in 1996 against then Interior Minister
Hassan el-Alfi for 500,000 pounds ($147,000) damages over
the alleged abduction of her husband, Mansour al-Kikhia [pictured.]
An Egyptian circuit court is now scheduled to hear the case
on December 27. Earlier this year, a lower court threw out
Emary's case for lack of evidence.
Mansour al-Kikhia, a former Libyan foreign minister and opposition figure,
was in Cairo attending a human rights conference when he
disappeared, a day before Libya vowed to crush opponents
of its leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi. [Reuters]
Wednesday: 21 October, 1998:
Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi
arrived in the Tunisian southwestern city of Tozeur on
Monday to start a holiday to recuperate from a hip operation.
Tunisia's foreign ministry said in a statement that the visit, at
the invitation of Tunisian President Zaine al-Abidine Ben Ali,
was ``brotherly and for resting.''
Al-Qadhafi crossed the Tunisian land border post of
Ras Jedir and continued to Tozeur aboard a bus, going
through the southeastern city of Gabes. [Reuters]
Monday: 19 October, 1998:
Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi says he doesn't want confrontation with the United States and Great Britain over the planned Lockerbie bombings trial, The Sunday Telegraph reported. Sunday's newspaper quoted al-Qadhafi as saying, ``We have no interest in confrontation. Our people want peace. They want to be friends.''
The newspaper said al-Qadhafi renews his offer in the interview to hand over the two men, Lamen
Fhimah and Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, suspected in the Luckerbie bombing. ``We can solve this problem very easily. The families of the victims will be satisfied. We have no interest in this tension,'' the newspaper quoted al-Qadhafi as saying.
[AP]
Sunday: 18 October, 1998:
Britain said on
Friday there had been no breakthrough in Libya's talks with
the United Nations on whether a trial on the 1988 mid-air
bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, could be held in the
Netherlands.
A main stumbling point in surrendering the suspects to Dutch
authorities for a trial under Scottish law is where the two
Libyans would be imprisoned, if convicted in the bombing in
which 270 people died.
Neither the United States nor Britain is willing to negotiate this
issue, saying the two must be jailed in Scotland and not in the
Netherlands or Libya as Tripoli insists. [Reuters]
Thursday: 15 October, 1998:
Libya has been assured that no witnesses it would send to a possible trial on
the Lockerbie case would be arrested for any incident
connected with the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner,
diplomats said on Wednesday. But they said the main stumbling point in conducting a trial in
the Netherlands under Scottish law was still where the two
Libyan suspects would serve their sentence if convicted.
Neither the United States nor Britain are willing to negotiate
this point, saying the two must be imprisoned in Scotland and
not jailed in the Netherlands or Libya as Tripoli insists.
Libya sent a team on Sept. 30 to confer with U.N. legal
officers on the Anglo-American proposal to try two suspects
in the Netherlands under Scottish law.
The Libyan team is still in New York, the diplomats said. [Reuters]
Monday: 12 October, 1998:
The Tunisian navy intercepted 54
Africans aboard two ships bound for Italy this week in a
coastal operation designed to crack down on illegal
immigration, a leading Tunisian newspaper said on Saturday.
The government-controlled daily "La Presse" said the people
came from Somalia, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Liberia.
A preliminary investigation showed that one ship left from a
port near Ceuta in Morocco and the other from Libya. [Reuters]
http://www.libyana.org/art/fhema/bu_jna7.htm
Friday: 9 October, 1998:
Two Libyan suspects wanted in connection with the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, said they did not think they could get a fair trial in any European court and would prefer to face Arab of African judges. The two, Abdelbasset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, spoke in an interview broadcast on Thursday by the London-based MBC satellite television channel monitored in Tunis. Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi, also interviewed by MBC, reiterated his belief that an U.S.-British proposal for a trial in the Netherlands was a trick and denied the two suspects were Libyan intelligence officers. [Reuters]
Thursday: 8 October, 1998:
Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi said he would consider any Turkish attack on Syria as an
"aggression'' against Libya. "Any Turkish aggression against Syria will be considered as
an aggression against Libya,'' al-Qadhafi said in a speech on Monday night at a rally in the Libyan southern city of Sebha. He warned Ankara that its business interests with Tripoli
would be hurt should an attack take place. Turkish firms
operating in Libya would be replaced by Greek firms,
al-Qadhafi said. Turkey and Greece are at odds over the Cyprus issue. [Reuters]
Tuesday: 6 October, 1998:
A Libyan legal team has left for
New York to discuss with U.N. officials arrangements for a
trial in the Netherlands of two Libyan suspects in the 1988
bombing of a Pan Am airliner, Libya's official news agency
JANA reported on Monday.
The agency, received in Tunis, said the Libyan team would
seek guarantees that the two suspects would not be
transferred to the United States or Britain from the
Netherlands.
It did not specify when the team left and did not name its
members.
It was not clear whether JANA was referring to a Libyan
team that met Hans Corell, the undersecretary-general for
legal affairs, at the United Nations last week. [Reuters]
Monday: 5 October, 1998:
After decades of preaching pan-Arab unity and injecting Libya
into the affairs of the Middle East, Libyan leader Col. Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi
apparently had a revelation recently about Libya's place in the world:
Libya, he has decided, is African. "I have no more to lose talking with Arabs," al-Qadhafi said, according to
published accounts of a television interview with the Libyan leader. "The
Arab world is finished. . . . Africa is a paradise. . . . I would like Libya to
become a black country. Hence, I recommend to Libyan men to marry
only black women, and to Libyan women to marry black men." According to reports in the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat, the Libyan bureaucracy is already beginning the transformation.
[Washington Post]
Saturday: 3 October, 1998:
Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi
has warned shopkeepers and traders to bring down prices of
their goods or face being driven out of the country by angry
crowds. "I advise traders that they don't have a future (in
Libya)...Their profits have been too high,'' al-Qadhafi said in a
speech on Thursday night, broadcast by Libyan state
television and monitored in Tunis. "I advise them before (demonstrators) set their shops ablaze
to go to another country, go to Africa." Al-Qadhafi was speaking at the closing session of a one-day meeting of the General People's Congress in the coastal town
of Sirte. [Reuters]
Saturday: 3 October, 1998:
A spokesman for the relatives of the victims of the
Lockerbie bombing, Jim Swire, says he believes Libya
has legitimate concerns over the proposed trial in the
Netherlands of the two Libyan suspects. Tripoli has asked for guarantees that the suspects, who
are to be tried under Scottish law, will not be extradited
to Britain or the United States, and that Libyan
witnesses will be protected. Dr Swire told the BBC he believed Libya's concerns
could be resolved within weeks, if they were properly
discussed. The United States and Britain have said their proposal for
the trial in not up for negotiation. [BBC]
Saturday: 3 October, 1998:
Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi
said he hoped Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni would
agree on setting up an African force to replace Ugandan and
Rwandan troops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Al-Qadhafi made the proposal after a mini-summit on
Wednesday night with Museveni, and Presidents Idriss Deby
of Chad, Isayas Afewerki of Eritrea and Ibrahim Bare
Mainassara of Niger in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte. [Reuters]
Thursday: 1 October, 1998:
Libya sent a team to New York on Wednesday to confer with U.N. legal
officers on a British-American proposal to try two suspects in
the 1988 Pan American airliner bombing in the Netherlands,
diplomats said.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said the group was meeting
Hans Corell, the undersecretary-general for legal affairs, but
that he could not say how long they would be at U.N.
headquarters.
Libya's U.N. Ambassador Abuzed Omar Dora told the
General Assembly on Tuesday that his government insisted on
changes in the proposals, particularly where the two men, if
convicted, would serve their sentences. [Reuters]
Thursday: 1 October, 1998:
Three African presidents flew to
Libya on Wednesday despite a U.N. embargo on flights imposed in connection
with the bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie,
Scotland, in 1988.
Libyan state television, monitored in Tunis, broadcast the
arrivals of presidents Idriss Deby of Chad, Isayas Afewerki of
Eritrea and Ibrahim Bare Mainassara of Niger at the Libyan
coastal city of Sirte, 450 km (280 miles) east of Tripoli.
The three were greeted at the airport by one of Libyan leader
Muammar al-Qadhafi's lieutenants, Abubakr Yunes. [Reuters]
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