Senate wants regular reports on Libya
WASHINGTON --Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would have to report twice a year to Congress on Libya's compensation to victims of terrorist attacks under legislation passed by the U.S. Senate.
Senators voted unanimously to require a semiannual account of State Department actions and progress in helping collect compensation from Libya for the 1988 bombing of a New York-bound Pan American World Airways flight and a 1986 attack on a Berlin disco. The proposal hasn't been introduced in the House of Representatives.
The legislation is a sign of the intense feeling in Congress that Libya needs to settle the outstanding claims before full normalization of relations, said David Goldwyn, executive director of the U.S.-Libya Business Association. Rice plans a visit to Libya later this year, the first for a U.S. secretary of state in 50 years.
"Our view is that more high-level, serious, intensive contact between the U.S. and Libya is the most likely pathway to both deepening the relationship and resolving the historical issues," Go ldwyn said in a telephone interview.
Rice's trip may also smooth the way for American oil companies such as Occidental Petroleum Corp. that are vying for access to Africa's largest oil reserves. The U.S.-Libya Business Association, founded by energy companies including Occidental, said its members are losing out to European competitors whose heads of state have met with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.
Sanctions lifted
The U.S. lifted most sanctions against Libya in 2004 after Qaddafi renounced his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.
Qaddafi previously had handed over for trial two suspects in the Pan Am attack, which killed 270 when it crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland. He also agreed to pay $35 million to German and Turkish victims of the Berlin bombing that killed three and injured 200. The nightclub also was frequented by U.S. military personnel.
"Libya needs to understand that the way forward must finally and fully account for the past," said Delaware Democrat Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and sponsor of the measure, in a statement today. "These victims and their families deserve to know what their government is doing on their behalf to settle these cases and bring them long-awaited justice."
Passage of the legislation "is a clear message to the Libyans that the Senate believes there must be closure with the victims and their families before there can be regular relations between o ur two countries," said Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, a co-sponsor of the legislation and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in the joint statement with Biden.
Rebuffed, ignored
Previous requests for information from the State Department have been "rebuffed or simply ignored," Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat who also co-sponsored the measure, said in the statement.
Lautenberg is among senators blocking the confirmation of a U.S. ambassador to Libya, and he successfully added language to an appropriations measure that stripped $110 million in funding for a U.S. embassy in Tripoli.
The State Department will provide the reports, as requested, department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said. Mohamed Melad, a spokesman for the Libyan Embassy in Washington, declined to comment, saying he wasn't familiar enough with the issue.