Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=2/26/04

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

TITLE=LIBYA / U-S

NUMBER=5-54963

BYLINE=GARY THOMAS

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: With its announcement of the removal of its travel ban on Libya, the Bush administration has taken another step toward rapprochement between the United States and a nation once viewed as an outlaw state. As correspondent Gary Thomas reports, the United States is offering step-by-step rewards for Libya's cooperation in dismantling weapons programs.

TEXT: Once branded as an outlaw state run by a man that former President Ronald Reagan labeled a "madman" and "unpredictable fanatic," Libya is going through a period of diplomatic rehabilitation. Libya has renounced terrorism and given up weapons of mass destruction programs -- actions that a White House statement labels as serious and credible.

Analysts say the Bush administration has skillfully dangled the proverbial carrot, or reward, along with the threat of using the stick to win the cooperation of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi.

William Zartman, director of conflict management studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, says the lifting of the travel ban is another incentive for Libya to continue on the path on which it has embarked.

/// ZARTMAN ACT ///

A carrot is the removal of a stick. A stick is the withholding of a carrot. And this is both the removal of a stick, and also a carrot, a reward for the cooperation up to this point.

/// END ACT ///

For some 23 years, Libya has been ostracized as a state sponsor of terrorism. There were training camps on its soil for Palestinian and Irish militants, and the government provided weapons to terrorist groups. Libyan agents have been blamed for the 1988 bombing of a flight over Scotland that killed 270 people. Libya also sought to acquire weapons of mass destruction from Pakistan.

Libya's rehabilitation seemed to go off track, however, when the country's prime minister recently said Libya was not taking responsibility for the bombing, and that it had agreed to pay compensation to the victims only to end sanctions. The statement was later retracted.

Monsour El-Kikhia is a Libyan exile and a professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He says the prime minister's statement indicates that Libya still believes it did nothing wrong, but is making penitential acts to escape years of punishing sanctions.

/// EL-KIKHIA ACT ///

And it finally says, but that is the cost of getting out of this box. For them this whole issue is a financial arrangement, no more and no less. And once out of that box, it's going to be very, very difficult to put them back in the box.

/// END ACT ///

He says Mr. Gadhafi has been extremely skillful at getting concessions from the West in giving up weapons programs that he says were not that far along anyway.

/// EL-KIKHIA ACT ///

Perhaps the ingenuity of Gadhafi is that he puts you in a place where you have to give him the carrot. You see, he shifts it and he sifts it and turns it around to ensure that he gets the biggest carrot there is.

/// END ACT ///

President Bush has said diplomacy and what he termed "decisive actions" are sending a clear message to governments possessing or seeking to get weapons of mass destruction. But Dirk Vandewalle, a Libya expert and professor of government at Dartmouth College, says there is no direct linkage between U-S action against Iraq for its alleged weapons and Libya's renunciation of them.

/// VANDEWALLE ACT ///

It's much more complex than that. As a matter of fact, there is no real direct link between the war in Iraq and Libya's position. The negotiations and the process started two or three years before the actual war took place. Although I'm sure governments in the Middle East watched anxiously at what happened in Iraq, there is really no direct link between the war and the ongoing developments in Libya right now.

/// END ACT ///

Nevertheless, U-S officials hope Libya's actions convince other nations to similarly renounce their weapons programs in the hope of reaping tangible rewards. (SIGNED)

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