The Iraq War did not Force Gadaffi's Hand
The Financial Times, March 9, 2004
Martin S. Indyk, Director, Saban Center for Middle East Policy
Embarrassed by the failure to find Saddam
Hussein's weapons of mass destruction,
President George W. Bush is trying to find
another WMD-related justification for his
pre-emptive war on Iraq. Bush administration
spokesmen have been quick to portray
Libya's December decision to abandon
WMD programmes as the direct result of the
US invasion of Iraq or, as Mr. Bush himself put it in his State of
the Union address: "Nine months of intense negotiations
succeeded with Libya, while 12 years of diplomacy with Iraq
did not." In diplomacy, noted the president, "words must be
credible, and no one can now doubt the word of America"
(applause).
The implication is clear. Get rid of one dictator because of his
supposed WMD programmes and others will be so afraid that
they will voluntarily abandon their weapons programmes.
Therefore, even if no WMDs were found in Iraq, we still made
the world a safer place. The perfect comeback.
In Muammer Gadaffi's case, this proposition is questionable.
In fact, Libyan representatives offered to surrender WMD
programmes more than four years ago, at the outset of secret
negotiations with US officials. In May 1999, their offer was
officially conveyed to the US government at the peak of the
"12 years of diplomacy with Iraq" that Mr. Bush now
disparages. Back then, Libya was facing a deepening
economic crisis produced by disastrous economic policies
and mismanagement of its oil revenues. United Nations and
US sanctions that prevented Libya importing oilfield
technology made it impossible for Mr. Gadaffi to expand oil
production. The only way out was to seek rapprochement with
Washington.
Reinforcing this economic imperative was Mr. Gadaffi's own
quest for respectability. Fed up with pan-Arabism, he turned to
Africa, only to find little support from old allies there. Removing
the sanctions and their accompanying stigma became his
priority.
From the start of President Bill Clinton's administration, Mr.
Gadaffi had tried to open back-channels, using various Arab
interlocutors with little success. Disappointed, he turned to
Britain, first settling a dispute over the shooting of a British
policewoman in London and then offering to send the two
Libyans accused in the Lockerbie PanAm 103 bombing for
trial in a third country. For the US, accepting this offer had the
advantage of bringing Libyan terrorists to justice. But it also
generated pressure in the UN Security Council to lift
sanctions. The task of US diplomacy then was to maintain the
sanctions until Mr. Gadaffi had fulfilled all other obligations
under the UN resolutions: ending support for terrorism,
admitting culpability and compensating victims' families.
That was why the Clinton administration opened the secret
talks on one condition—that Libya cease lobbying in the UN to
lift the sanctions. It did. At the first meeting, in Geneva in May
1999, we used the promise of official dialogue to persuade
Libya to co-operate in the campaign against Osama bin
Laden and provide compensation for the Lockerbie families.
Libya's representatives were ready to put everything on the
table, saying that Mr. Gadaffi had realised that was not the
path to pursue and that Libya and the US faced a common
threat from Islamic fundamentalism. In that context, they said,
Libya would actively co-operate in the campaign against
al-Qaeda and would end all support for Palestinian
"rejectionist" groups, endorse US peace efforts in the Middle
East and help in conflict resolution in Africa.
On the issue of WMD, the US at the time was concerned
about Libya's clandestine production of chemical weapons.
Expressing a preference for a multilateral forum, Libyan
representatives offered to join the Chemical Weapons
Convention and open their facilities to inspection. In a
subsequent meeting in October 1999, Libya repeated its offer
on chemical weapons and agreed to join the Middle East
multilateral arms control talks taking place at the time. Why did
we not pursue the Libyan WMD offer then? Because resolving
the PanAm 103 issues was our condition for any further
engagement. Moreover, as Libya's chemical weapons
programme was not considered an imminent threat and its
nuclear programme barely existed, getting Libya out of
terrorism and securing compensation had to be top priorities.
We told the Libyans that once these were achieved, UN
sanctions could be lifted but US sanctions would remain until
the WMD issues were resolved.
The fact that Mr. Gadaffi was willing to give up his WMD
programmes and open facilities to inspection four years ago
does not detract from the Bush administration's achievement
in securing Libya's nuclear disarmament. However, in doing
so, Mr. Bush completed a diplomatic game plan initiated by
Mr. Clinton. The issue here, however, is not credit. Rather, it is
whether Mr. Gadaffi gave up his WMD programmes because
Mr. Hussein was toppled, as Mr. Bush now claims. As the
record shows, Libyan disarmament did not require a war in
Iraq.
© Copyright 2004 The Financial Times Ltd |
