Libya offers fresh talks on French airliner payout

Libya missed a deadline to settle a compensation deal with families of the 170 people killed in a 1989 French airliner bombing, but has offered fresh talks early next week to hammer out an agreement, relatives said yesterday.

Contacts between the families and the Gaddafi Foundation, a non-government body run by the Libyan leader's son, resumed late Saturday afternoon, ahead of a midnight deadline fixed a month ago when an outline accord was struck.

That interim agreement saw Paris end its opposition to the lifting of UN sanctions against Libya, imposed over a separate bombing of a US airliner over Scotland.

Hours ahead of the deadline's expiry, French President Jacques Chirac, speaking at the end of an official visit to Morocco, warned of unspecified consequences if Libya failed to keep its side of the bargain.

"We were pretty quickly invited to visit Tripoli today, but we have also suggested that the working meeting take place in Paris," Guillaume Denoix de Saint Marc, a spokesman for the families, told Reuters yesterday.

"We are looking for the most practical solution for everyone," he said, adding that contacts were expected to continue throughout the day.

"There is a willingness (by Libya) to make progress, but over the past year and a half we have become used to going round in circles and have learnt to be pragmatic about delays."

The talks will focus on the size of the award, the schedule of payments and how the sum will be shared between the victims, who come from 18 different countries.

Libya has never formally acknowledged responsibility for the explosion of the UTA airliner over the West African state of Niger. A French court convicted six Libyans in absentia, and Tripoli paid $34 million in compensation ordered by the court.

Many families, however, have never received any compensation, and the campaigners redoubled their efforts after Libya agreed to pay $2.7 billion to families of the 270 people killed in the 1988 PanAm bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Denoix de Saint Marc later told Europe 1 radio that the Lockerbie award was a marker for the UTA families:

"We have to make (the awards) more comparable so there isn't the impression of a flagrant difference between passengers on an American flight and passengers on a French flight."

SOS-Attentats, a support group for victims of terrorist attacks which is also involved in the negotiations, said the families had rejected an offer of $1 million per victim.

The group has urged the French government to exert pressure on Tripoli in the event of the deadline being missed. The French Foreign Ministry said it was monitoring the case closely.

Denoix de Saint Marc welcomed Chirac's support, saying it was "important that the Gaddafi Foundation see that France is following this case very closely".

The spokesman, whose father died in the UTA airliner bombing, blamed the delay in the talks, at a standstill since September 19, on divisions within the Libyan leadership.