This takes the cake! Libya is forcing the French companies there to pay the restitution to the French people the Libyans killed. And the French Government is going for it!
Lockerbie: French companies to pay up
Friday, 12 September , 2003, 17:52
Paris: French companies with contracts in Libya will pay part of the agreed compensation to families of victims of the 1989 UTA airliner bombing, the son of the Libyan leader who negotiated the deal said Friday.
"We are going to create a special fund managed by the two sides. It will be fed by contributions from French companies operating in Libya," Seif el-Islam Kadhafi, the son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, told Le Figaro newspaper.
"This was not an agreement reached by the Libyan state, but by the charitable organisation I head. Because it is a non-governmental organisation it does not control public funds. It can only function with voluntary contributions. All French companies working in Libya should contribute to this fund," he said.
On Thursday relatives of the 170 people who died when the DC-10 crashed in Niger announced a compensation agreement with Tripoli that is expected to open the way to the lifting of UN sanctions against the government of Moamer Kadhafi.
Kadhafi junior, who runs the Kadhafi Foundation charity, said the sum of money to be paid would be announced shortly, and that the compensation was part of a wider political agreement amounting to a "global settlement with France."
"The UTA case was closed for us several years ago. When France asked for it to be re-opened we made several demands in return," he said.
These included discussions on the convictions passed on six Libyans found guilty in absentia in Paris of carrying out the UTA bombing, compensation for three Libyan airmen killed by a French jet over Chad and a friendship accord with France, he said.
The French government supported the demands of the UTA families for compensation equivalent to that negotiated last month by US and Britain for the 1988 Lockerbie crash, and it threatened to veto the UN vote lifting sanctions unless Tripoli gave way.
Relatives of the 270 people who died in the Lockerbie bombing have been promised a total of 2.7-billion-dollars (2.4-billion-euro) in return for the removal of international sanctions. The UTA families received a fraction of that -- 35 million dollars -- after the 1999 Paris court case.
A vote in the UN security council was expected to go ahead later Friday.
In Paris Francoise Rudetzki -- president of the campaigning group SOS Attacks which helped the families in the negotiations -- reacted indignantly to what she described as "new demands" from the Libyan government.
"I am worried because these unilateral statements completely contradict the agreement signed," she said.
She also described as "totally insufficient" the sum of one million dollars per family that some newspapers suggested Libya had agreed to pay. The exact payment will be set after further discussions over the next month, she said.
"© 2003 sify.com India Limited. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed."
sify.com |
