Security Council vote on Libya sanctions delayed by veto threat

UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. Security Council delayed a vote to lift sanctions against Libya until Friday, after France threatened a veto to gain greater compensation for the relatives of people killed in a French airline bombing.

After difficult closed-door negotiations, the council on Tuesday agreed to give the French a last chance to win a settlement with Libya similar to that for families of victims of the Lockerbie air disaster.

But Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, the current council president, and other members made clear they would not accept any further delays.

In a fast-moving day of diplomacy, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin spoke twice with his British counterpart, Jack Straw, threatening to veto the lifting of sanctions unless families of the 1989 UTA bombing were satisfied.

The French Foreign Ministry said in a statement that "a fair agreement ... appears to be within reach." But Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous said, "The victims' families must confirm their satisfaction with the negotiations -- that would be the deciding factor for us."

Pressing for vote

The United States and Britain have pressed for a vote since Aug. 15, when Libya agreed to a $2.7 billion compensation deal for families of the 270 Lockerbie bombing victims and acknowledged responsibility for the attack.

The deal will give each victim's family $5 million to $10 million, a settlement that embarrassed France.

The French government settled with Libya in 1999 for just $33 million to be shared by families of the 170 people killed in the bombing of a UTA flight over Niger in 1989 -- giving relatives of each victim about $194,000.

French raise demands

When French families learned of the Lockerbie settlement, they demanded more money.

The United States had been so sure of a vote to end more than a decade of sanctions stemming from the Lockerbie bombing that 50 relatives of the victims sat in the Security Council's visitor gallery to witness it.

Instead, on a procedural vote, all 15 council members then voted in favor of adjourning the meeting until Friday.

"The council is united and determined to address this issue at 10:30 a.m. on Friday," Jones Parry said. "I don't want to talk about any more delay."

U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said the United States was "very disappointed" that the vote didn't take place Tuesday "and our hearts go out to the families of the victims who have been waiting and suffering so patiently for the day to come when this vote takes place."

France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere would not predict what will happen in Friday's vote.

"What the council has decided ... was to give a last chance to these negotiations," he said.

The sanctions -- a ban on arms sales and air links with Libya -- were indefinitely suspended in 1999 after two Libyans sought in the Lockerbie bombing were handed over for trial. But Libya has pressed for the embargoes to be lifted -- not just suspended -- to restore its standing in the international community.

Britain and the United States have said Libya has met all the requirements to lift the strictures.

"Libya has accepted responsibility," Jones Parry told the council on Tuesday. "Libya has agreed to pay a substantial sum of compensation to the relatives of those who were murdered. And Libya has agreed to cooperate with any further Lockerbie investigation and has renounced terrorism."

The Lockerbie families will be paid $4 million each when U.N. sanctions against Libya are lifted.

If the United States lifts its own sanctions against Libya, the families will receive another $4 million and if Libya is removed from the U.S. State Department's list of countries sponsoring terrorism, they will get an additional $2 million.

If the United States refuses, each Lockerbie family will get an additional $1 million after October.

A Scottish court convicted Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi of the bombing in 2001 and sentenced him to life imprisonment. A second Libyan was acquitted.