Analysis: Libya in from the Cold
Council on Foreign Relations
May 15, 2006
Prepared by: Eben Kaplan
The preemption doctrine is working. At least, that's what the Bush administration officials say in regard to Libya. Talks aimed at settling disputes between Washington and Tripoli—not least Libya's role in bringing down Pan Am 103 in 1988—had staggered along for years. But the process accelerated after 9/11, and since then the North African nation has carefully maneuvered itself back toward the realm of international acceptance (BBC). Two months after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for the Pan Am Flight 103 atrocity. Libya's dictator, Muammar el-Qaddafi, soon after announced he would dismantle his country's chemical and nuclear weapons programs, providing valuable information that helped UN officials close down the black market in nuclear weapons technology (The Atlantic) run by Pakistani physicist A.Q. Khan.
Libya is now poised to benefit from its decision to cooperate with Washington (NYT). A May 15 statement from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the resolution to resume full diplomatic relations with Tripoli flows from "the historic decisions taken by Libya's leadership in 2003 to renounce terrorism and to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programs." This is quite a reversal, as Libya was a charter member of the State Department's 27-year-old "State Sponsors of Terror" list. President Reagan went so far as to approve the bombing of Qaddafi's home in 1986 after Libyan agents were linked to a Berlin disco bombing that killed U.S. servicemen (BBC).
Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.
Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.
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