POLITICS-US: No Quick Normalisation With Libya

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 1 1999 (IPS) - The adminstration of President Bill Clinton, resisting pressure from US oil giants and other major companies, is taking its time in deciding whether to normalise ties with Libya.

Nonetheless, there is some satisfaction with recent moves taken by Libyan leader Muammar Khadafi following his action in turning over the Netherlands the two suspects accused of organising the 1988 bombing of Pan American flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Washington also acknowledges as “positive” and “significant” Tripoli’s declining support for terrorism, as symbolised by the expulsion of the Abu Nidal Organisation and its support for the Palestinian Authority headed by Yasser Arafat, according to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and North African Affairs Ronald Neumann.

“But the picture of Libya’s current actions is only slowly coming into focus,” he told the Middle East Institute here, “and our understanding of Libya’s intentions or how the Libyan government sees itself in the world remains quite unclear.”

Neumann said that, until Tripoli takes further steps, it would be premature to consider any lifting US sanctions but adds that “Libya is not Iraq.”

“We do not seek to maintain sanctions until there is a change of regime,” he said.

Neumann’s address, made before an audience consisting mainly of diplomats and lobbyists whose clients are companies eager to do business with Libya, appears to rule out any significant easing of sanctions in the near term.

As such, it disappointed many listeners who clearly are concerned that US business is losing out to foreign companies which have normalised commercial ties with Libya after the UN Security Council suspended its sanctions against Tripoli in April.

“Our competitors started going down there willy-nilly,” said Michael Stinson, an executive at Conoco, the Texas-based oil company and one of several major US companies whose considerable interests in Libya have been frozen for over a decade.

With oil prices rising this year to their highest levels in 10 years, Libya also is looking to modernise much of its infrastructure, which has deteriorated over the last seven years while sanctions were in effect.

“US companies would be vitally interested in that market,” Stinson points out.

Since Britain moved to normalise relations last month, the United States is the last major western country to actively enforce sanctions against Tripoli, a status which further frustrates US business.

Washington has had an extremely antagonistic relationship with Libya virtually since Khadafi took power in 1969. In 1979, it first designated Tripoli as a state sponsor of terrorism.

In January, 1986, Washington imposed comprehensive economic sanctions after Washington accused Libya of involvement in terrorist attacks in Rome and Vienna.

Three months later it carried out bombing raids against targets along the Mediterranean coast, including Khadafi’s own compound, after accusing the Libyan leader of backing the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque frequented by US soldiers.

In 1992, the United States, Britain and France succeeded in getting the Security Council to impose multilateral sanctions against Tripoli for its refusal to turn over suspects in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and in the downing of a French airliner over West Africa in 1989.

The Council banned all international flights to and from Libya, as well as the sale of arms, aircraft and spare parts. Tripoli was also required to reduce the size of its embassies abroad and restrict the movements of its diplomats.

It was not until last April, however, when Libya turned over the two suspects in the Lockerbie bombing that Washington and London agreed to a suspension of the sanctions.

The United States, however, has opposed lifting the sanctions permanently, arguing that Tripoli has not yet met all the requirements of the sanctions resolution.

According to Mary-Ann Deeb, an expert at the Library of Congress here, Libya had two major reasons for turning over the bombing suspects.

On the one hand, for the first time since the early 1990’s, Khadafi had his domestic political situation under control – having successfully repressed a persistent Islamic insurgency and several tribal uprisings.

“Between 1992 and 1998, he feared that handing over the two men would be taken as a sign of weakness internally. Now he’s got control,” Deeb said.

On the other hand, the deteriorating economic situation, caused primarily by the plunge in oil prices late last year and in early 1999 to 10 dollars per barrel, threatened to destabilise the regime. Khadafi felt he had to normalise ties with the major western powers, in order to attract badly needed investment, according to Deeb.

That strategy has largely succeeded, Neumann admitted, noting that “we can expect that Libya’s reintegration into the international community will continue, whether we like it or not.”

But Washington will not join the rush, at least for now, he said. “We have argued that Libya’s past history of support for terrorism and intervention outside its borders cannot simply be forgotten, and that trust needs to be based on a consistent pattern of altered behaviour and concrete actions.”

Washington believes that Khadafi is not as eager to normalise ties with the US government as he is to welcome back US businesses, particularly the oil companies.

Neumann also stressed that Washington, which has accused Tripoli of building weapons of mass destruction in the past, especially wants Libya to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention and open its territory to international inspections.

But Herman Cohen, a former assistant secretary of state for Africa, who has met Khadhafi several times in Tripoli since 1996, said that he believed the Libyan leader wanted to normalise ties with Washington.

“The word I hear most often is ‘normalisation,’ Cohen said. “Their attitude is ‘We’ve got to live with the hegemon; we don’t like it, (but) we want dialogue. We want normalisation of relations.”