Group demands payment from Libya for UTA bombing

A group representing the families of the Africans who died on a French airliner blown up in 1989 over Niger demanded yesterday that Libya pay compensation equivalent to that offered to the Lockerbie victims.

"We will never accept an agreement that is under that contained in the agreement on Lockerbie," a spokesman for the kin of the 88 Africans who died on the UTA bombing over Niger, Abderaman Koulamallah, told Radio France Internationale.

Representatives of a group representing all the 170 victims on the UTA flight have been in Tripoli since Thursday, negotiating with officials from the Qaddhafi Foundation, run by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddhafi's son Seif al-Islam.

They went with the blessing of the French government, which has threatened to block a deal under which international sanctions against Libya would be lifted in return for a US$2.7-billion (2.4-billion euro) compensation payment to the kin of the 270 people who died in the bombing of a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

France has succeeded in delaying a UN vote on lifting the sanctions while the Tripoli negotiations take place.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has repeated that he, too, wants to see Lockerbie-sized payments to the families of all the victims on the UTA flight before sanctions are lifted.

His office has emphasized that compensation was being sought for the families of all the people killed on UTA flight, regardless of the nationality.

The French aircraft was carrying 54 French, 48 Congolese, 25 Chadians, 10 Italians, eight Americans, five Cameroonians, four Britons, three Canadians, three people from the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), two Central Africans, two Malians, two Swiss passengers, one Algerian, one Greek, one Moroccan and one Senegalese.

Paris has said that a 30-million euro (US$33-million) payment by Libya to a third of the UTA families in 1989 as a "definitive resolution" of the bombing was insufficient in light of the recent Lockerbie deal, and it was now seeking a much higher "complementary settlement."

Koulamallah said, "It seems that the French government is giving more priority to the French families at the moment. Let there be no mistake: the African families will never accept a cut-price deal.

"If people think they can throw us crumbs to keep us happy, they better think again. We will never, never accept that," he said.

A French foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday that the talks in Tripoli were continuing and there was no development as yet to report.

Libya initially termed the French demand "blackmail," but on Friday its ambassador to London, Mohammed al-Zouai, said an improved compensation offer to the UTA families might be made.

The US Department of State said Friday that Libya had transferred the entire US$2.7 billion agreed under the Lockerbie deal to a Swiss escrow account.