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Chirac warns Libya to keep its promise on airliner bombing

French President Jacques Chirac warned on Saturday that Libya's ties with France will suffer if it fails to follow through on a deal to increase compensation for an airliner bombing in 1989.

"I don't want to imagine that these promises won't be adhered to. If by chance they were not, it would not be possible for that to not have consequences for relations" between France and Libya, said Chirac.

"I say this without aggression, but without weakness," added the French president, who delivered his warning at a news conference during a visit to Morocco.

Under an earlier preliminary agreement, Libya and negotiators for families of those killed in the bombing were meant to have reached a definitive deal on compensation by Saturday.

But Francoise Rudetzki, one of those involved in the talks, said that negotiations are stalled. She expressed hope that Chirac's comments would prompt Libya into action.

"We're still waiting for a sign from Libya," she said.

Abderaman Koulamallah, whose sister and five of her children were killed in the attack, said "France should take severe diplomatic measures" against Libya.

The earlier partial deal, signed on Sept. 10, cleared the way for a UN vote that lifted 11-year-old sanctions against Libya.

Libya has proposed US$1 million for each family of the 170 people killed in the bombing of the French UTA airline DC-10 over Niger, but the sum is still too low, said a spokesman in France for the families, Guillaume Denoix de Saint Marc.

He said he remained convinced, however, that a solution would be found. He said he believed that Libya's failure to meet the Saturday deadline for a definitive compensation deal was due to organizational problems on its part, not a change of heart.

"It is not possible that Libya could come back into the court of nations having killed 170 people and not having resolved the problem," said Denoix de Saint Marc, whose father was killed in the bombing.

A French anti-terrorism court convicted the brother-in-law of the Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi, and five other Libyans in absentia and sentenced them to life in prison in 1999 for the bombing. They remain at large.

The extra compensation being sought by victims' families would be a follow-up to US$33 million Libya already paid in the case.

But families, backed by the French government, demanded that Libya give more money after it agreed to pay far higher compensation -- US$2.7 billion -- to relatives of the 270 victims of the 1988 downing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland.
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