Eager to tout improved relations with Libya for abandoning its weapons programs, the White House omitted the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing from the list of terrorist attacks cited on Thursday by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, angering victims' families.
After the backlash, the White House scrambled to minimize the damage issuing a letter of apology by Rice to the Lockerbie families, some of whom said they had been sickened by the administration's stance.
PHOTO: EPA
"We did not include attacks that were the work of a government, such as the Libyan government's bombing of Pan Am 103. This was a mistake, for which I want to apologize to you and all the families who lost relatives on that terrible day," Rice said the letter provided to reporters.
"As you know from your painful personal experience, this was the most deadly terrorist action prior to al-Qaeda's attack of Sept. 11, 2001," she said.
Dan Cohen of New Jersey, whose 20-year-old daughter, Theodora, died in the bombing, said Rice's omission -- in testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks -- made him feel "sick."
"It's bad enough when you lose a child and then to have this whole thing swept away," he said.
Victims' families and other sources said the White House had omitted Lockerbie from Rice's speech in order not to upset U.S.-Libyan relations and detract from what the administration sees as its biggest post-Iraq war foreign policy success.
The White House insists that the invasion of Iraq played an important part in Libya's decision to disarm and has been steadily increasing ties with its leader, Muammar Gaddafi, once condemned by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan as the "mad dog of the Middle East."
Tripoli announced in December it would abandon efforts to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in a bid to further mend ties with the West after agreeing to pay damages for the 1988 airliner bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.
A Libyan secret agent was jailed in January 2001 for life for the bombing, which killed 270 people.
Rice, in her testimony, chronicled major terrorist attacks before Sept. 11, 2001.
"The terrorist threat to our nation did not emerge on Sept. 11, 2001... The attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983; the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985; the rise of al-Qaeda and the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993; the attacks on American installations in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996; the East Africa embassy bombings of 1998; the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 -- these and other atrocities were part of a sustained, systematic campaign to spread devastation and chaos and to murder innocent Americans," Rice said.
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