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U.S., British, Libyan Officials Describe Steps Leading to Libya’s Decision to Abandon WMD Efforts
U.S., British and Libyan officials have recently provided detailed information on the negotiations that led to Libya’s decision in late 2003 to dismantle its WMD programs, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 15). The details were disclosed in recent interviews with the Times. Libya first pitched giving up some of its WMD efforts in the late 1990s, with an offer to the Clinton administration to abandon chemical weapons development in exchange for loosening U.S. terrorism-related sanctions, officials said. The United States refused at the time, saying that resolving the issue of Libyan responsibility for the 1988 bombing of an airliner over Scotland was more important. However, the United Kingdom resumed diplomatic relations with Tripoli in summer 1999. Following that move, Libya turned over two intelligence agents implicated in the bombing, one of whom was convicted in 2001. Further negotiations between Libyan, British and U.S. officials led Tripoli to accept responsibility for the Lockerbie airline bombing and pledge to pay $2.7 billion to relatives of the 270 people killed in the attack. U.S. and British officials said they informed Libya that resolving the Lockerbie bombing issue was not enough to lead to improved relations, the Times reported. “We had made a point that while Lockerbie was extremely important, a sine qua non for progress on full reintegration would depend on addressing the WMD programs,” said one official. Negotiations increased following a March 2003 meeting between Seif Islam Qadhafi, son of Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qadhafi, and British intelligence agents, according to the Times. During that meeting, Qadhafi indicated his father was willing to negotiate. Over the next several weeks, U.S. and British intelligence officials met with the head of Libyan external intelligence, Mousa Kusa, and other Libyan officials in several European cities, the Times reported. “There were periodic contacts, but the Libyans were not admitting they had a nuclear program,” said a senior U.S. official. “They were being coy.” In late August 2003, however, a ship carrying nuclear-related equipment was intercepted en route to Libya. That event is believed by some to be the final impetus for Qadhafi’s decision, the Times reported. “The capture of the BBC China helped make clear to Libya that we had a lot of information about what it was doing,” said John Wolf, who was U.S. assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation at the time. A senior British official said, though, that Libya had previously hinted at possessing a nuclear weapons program and had intended to abandon it, the Times reported. “The BBC China was another nail in the coffin,” the official said. “But one can overplay the significance of that event.” Economics might have been behind Libya’s WMD disarmament, the final details of which were hammered out in a Dec. 16, 2003, meeting between Libyan, U.S. and British officials, one European diplomat said. “From my conversations with the Libyans, it appeared that they had determined that it was too expensive to develop nuclear weapons, both in specific terms and in terms of sanctions,” the diplomat said (Frantz/Meyer, Los Angeles Times, March 13).
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