US confirms Libya-Lockerbie trial considerations
US officials confirmed yesterday that the US is seeking "alternative ways" of bringing two Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing to trial, at the same time as the sanctions imposed against Libya have suffered a series of blows.
The US statements follow a report in yesterday's British Guardian daily that the US and Britain will seek to have the two suspects tried at The Hague under Scottish law. This proposal is very similar to one that Libya has been proposing, but which had been rejected in the past by both the US and Britain.
However, questions have been growing about the viability of the sanctions as the Organization of African Unity stated in its recent summit in Burkina Faso that it would stop adhering to economic sanctions against Libya if the UN Security Council does not reconsider the sanctions by September, and the air embargo has been broken several times recently, in flights by officials from Burkina Faso, Chad, and Niger.
However US State Department spokesman James Rubin said that the move was under consideration by the US for "many, many, many months" and defended the effectiveness of sanctions: "During those last seven years, the government of Libya has been isolated. It has had a sanctions regime imposed upon it. There is a travel ban for aircraft; there are oil parts that are not provided; there is a partial assets freeze. Believe me, all the indicators that are coming out of Libya are that they are desperate to get these sanctions removed. So they are feeling the sting of the sanctions."
Rubin said that the US move is "absolutely not" a change in US policy, saying that the proposal would fulfill the US objective. "If this moving of the Scottish court to a third country will achieve that objective, the loser is Libya and the winner are those like the United States and like the families who have been seeking justice for this heinous crime," Rubin said.
Rubin also confirmed that US Secretary of State Albright and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger spoke to several of the Lockerbie victims' families over the phone yesterday, finding a "wide spectrum of opinion" on the subject of holding the trial in an international venue.
US President Bill Clinton acknowledged that the two countries officials had considered holding the trial at the Hague, saying yesterday, "My guess is that it has come to public light because a significant number of conversations have had to be held between the American and the British authorities and between others in potential third-party venues, like the Netherlands. And I know there's been some discussion of that. But it has not been resolved yet."
"Our first goal was to bring the perpetrators of Pan Am 103 murders to justice," Clinton said.
Libya has offered in the past to turn the two suspects over for trial at a neutral site, possibly the International Court of Justice, for trial by Scottish law. They also won a victory earlier this year at the ICJ, which ruled that it has jurisdiction over a Libyan complaint filed against Britain and the US due to the demands for extradition to the custody of either of those two states.
Libya is under UN-imposed sanctions as a result of its refusal to extradite two suspects in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland which killed 270 people.