LIBYA-UN: Britain Attacks Arab League Decision on Libya

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 23 1997 (IPS) - British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said Tuesday the decision by 22 Arab governments to relax adherence to a U.N. travel embargo against Libya was “unwise” and could damage Arab interests.

Speaking during a visit to the United Nations, Cook rejected the argument by an Arab League resolution, passed in Cairo on Sunday, that Libyan flights to other countries – currently banned by the United Nations – should be allowed in special humanitarian cases or travel by Libyan leaders.

Such exceptions violated resolutions banning commercial air travel with Libya that were approved by the U.N. Security Council in March 1992 and “I think it is unwise for any group of member states to set aside a U.N. resolution,” Cook said.

The Arab League resolution, approved by 18 foreign ministers at the Cairo meeting, invited Arab countries to “take measures to alleviate the sanctions on Libya until a peaceful and just solution to the crisis can be found.” In particular, it called for allowing flights for Libyan officials participating in regional meetings and “transport of the ill and the dead and medicine, as well as religious flights.”

The new British foreign secretary compared the Arab League’s unwillingness to continue to adhere to the Council’s Libyan sanctions Resolutions 748 and 883 with its insistence that Resolutions 242 and 338 – which require Israel to return lands captured by war – be implemented in full.

The current decision on Libya, Cook argued, “undermines the authority of all U.N. resolutions…It would undermine U.N. resolutions on Israel, which I would not imagine would be in the interests of the Arab world.”

Political observers believed the Arab League decision was another sign of the dwindling respect for long-time U.N. embargoes. Although the Security Council enjoyed solid support for the 1992 travel ban, and a 1993 freeze on Libya’s overseas assets and commerce in oil-related machinery, the regular renewal of the sanctions has divided both the 15-nation Council and Arab nations.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been aware for some time, and has informed the Council, that support for the sanctions has been weakening,” said a U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Annan had suggested that the Council devise “sunset clauses” for long-running embargoes to expire before their duration tests member states’ patience, the official said.

Britain and the United States, however, have been adamant in keeping the pressure on Libya to allow the extradition of two of its citizens, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, suspected of involvement in the 1988 bombing of a Pan American flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people died.

The U.N. sanctions resolutions demand that the two men be turned over to face trial either in the United States or Britain before the sanctions can be lifted. Libya, however, has contended that the suspects cannot receive a fair trial in either country, and has suggested allowing them to be tried by a Scottish jury, and under Scottish law, at the International Court of Justice at the Hague.

Cook reiterated the rejection by former Prime Minister John Major’s Tory government of that offer, arguing that there are no provisions in Scottish law to allow its juries or judicial system to be applied in any other country. Instead, he said in response to concerns about a fair trial, “we will facilitate international observers at all stages of the proceedings in Scotland.”

Yet the Libyan offer – and its rejection by Washington and London – succeeded in undercutting support for the sanctions among Arab nations, who have already been frustrated by the ongoing seven-year embargo against Iraq. The fact that both embargoes are regularly renewed without comment by the Security Council – even as some of the Council’s permanent members, notably Russia and France, have pushed for an easing – has also fed accusations in the Arab world of U.N. bias.

As a result, an effort led by the United States to impose a travel ban on Sudan – to pressure Khartoum to provide information on a 1995 assassination plot against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak – has run aground in recent months despite initial approval by the Security Council.

The Council voted in favour of banning all international flights by Sudan Airways last year, but have yet to vote again to decide on a date to put that punishment into force. Concerns about the humanitarian effects of the flight ban and its duration have repeatedly prevented any such vote. U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson this month said only that “something might come up” to push the sanctions drive forward, but was reluctant to speculate on when the Council would take it up again.

Given such a climate – made worse by Arab dismay over the virtual collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process – Annan was not surprised by Sunday’s Arab League decision, said a U.N. official. But Annan, is not going to comment on the new Arab policy, leaving the response to the Security Council.

At a time when the Council itself is divided between sanctions “hardliners” like the United States and Britain, and more sanctions-wary states like France, Russia and most of the body’s developing nations, any consensus response could be difficult to devise.