The return to Libya of the Lockerbie bomber would mark another stage in the remarkable rehabilitation of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and a regime formerly shunned by Britain and other Western countries as a dangerous pariah. But relations with Tripoli remain tentative in other respects, with issues such as the 1984 murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London still unresolved.
Qaddafi can be expected to make political capital out of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s release. Next month will see celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the army coup — Qaddafi calls it a revolution — that overthrew King Idris. The Libyan leader will also chair an African Union summit and address the UN general assembly next month. The securing of Megrahi’s return would boost Qaddafi’s appetite for triumphalist showmanship.
In some ways Qaddafi has good reason for self-congratulation. In the 1980s he was locked in confrontation with the West, accused of supplying weaponry to the Irish Republican Army, of bombing a Berlin discotheque packed with US servicemen and of supporting Palestinian terrorism.
In 1986 the administration of former US president Ronald Reagan, which dubbed him “Mad Dog Qaddafi,” launched air strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi in an attempt to kill him. It was in the context of this undeclared war, also involving other radicalized Middle Eastern regimes including Iran, that the 1988 Lockerbie attack occurred. Qaddafi’s revolutionary zeal seemed to cool in later years as Libya’s economic problems, exacerbated by UN sanctions, mounted.
A turning point came in 2003 when Britain confronted him with proof of Libya’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons-related technology through backdoor deals with the rogue Pakistani atomic scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Qaddafi renounced his nuclear program, opened Libya’s facilities to inspection, and signaled a new era of collaboration with the west.
In return, UN sanctions were lifted, Britain and other EU countries dispatched trade missions, focusing in particular on Libya’s under-developed oil industry, and in 2004 former British prime minister Tony Blair met Qaddafi in a tent in Tripoli and offered him “the hand of friendship.”
Relations have steadily improved since then. Both British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US President Barack Obama met Qaddafi on the periphery of last month’s G8 summit in Italy. Downing Street said the Megrahi case and Fletcher’s murder were discussed. The abduction from Wigan, in Greater Manchester, of six-year-old Nadia Fawzi by her Libyan father was also on the agenda.
Overall, Brown and Qaddafi agreed the bilateral relationship was strong and “would grow still stronger,” British officials said.
A key driving force behind this rapprochement is growing British business interest in Libya.
BP has invested roughly US$1 billion in oil and gas exploration there while other oil majors and EU governments, notably France, are also in on the act. Britain is already supplying missiles and air defense systems to Tripoli under a 2007 agreement.
Some relatives of the Lockerbie victims, especially in the US, believe these growing business and commercial links have overly influenced the government’s response to Qaddafi’s request for Megrahi’s release.
Leading a business delegation to Libya last year, Lord Digby Jones, Britain’s then trade and investment minister, described the country as an exciting emerging market.
“The vital oil and gas sectors are the mainstay of Libya’s economy. BG, Shell and BP are working hard and productively with Libya’s National Oil Corporation,” Jones said.
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