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France may veto vote on Lockerbie

The UN Security Council was to vote yesterday to lift more than a decade of sanctions against Libya, but France was expected to block the long-awaited deal to settle the Lockerbie bombing case.

Libya agreed to a US$2.7 billion compensation deal on Aug. 15 for the families of the 270 victims of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland and acknowledged responsibility for the attack.

The deal will give each victim's family US$5 million to US$10 million, a settlement that embarrassed France, which settled for much less in a similar case.

The French government settled with Libya in 1999 for just US$33 million to be shared by families of the 170 people killed in the bombing of a UTA flight over Niger in 1989 -- giving relatives of each victim about US$194,000.

When French families learned of the Lockerbie settlement they demanded more money. Paris has demanded that Libya come up with a fairer compensation deal and has threatened to veto the lifting of sanctions unless it does.

Francoise Rudetzki, who advises the French families, said on Monday that the families are still waiting for an offer from Libya and want the vote put off.

"What we hope is that the vote will be a little bit more delayed to obtain a settlement, and if the British insist on calling for a vote, we hope that France will veto the resolution" as Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin promised the families, Rudetzki, who works with the Paris-base organization SOS Attentats, SOS Terrorisme, said.

The sanctions were imposed in 1992 to force Moammar Qadhafi's government to surrender two men wanted in the 1988 Pan Am bombing.
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