Libya Important Model for Regime Behavior Change, Rice Says
15 May 2006
Iran, North Korea should make similar strategic decisions, says secretary
Washington -- Libya's decision to renounce support for terrorism and eliminate its programs for weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles is a model that Iran and North Korea should emulate, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says.
"Libya is an important model," Rice said in a written statement May 15 announcing the return to full diplomatic relations with Libya, as the international community tries to encourage behavior changes in Tehran and Pyongyang -- "changes that could be vital to international peace and security."
"We urge the leadership of Iran and North Korea to make similar strategic decisions that would benefit their citizens," Rice said. Both nations remain on the list of state sponsors of terror, and have weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs as well.
In Libya's path to renewed diplomatic relations with the United States and removal from the U.S. list of terrorism sponsors, the decisions and actions of the last seven years were necessary to undo those of the previous 20.
CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS
Libya was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1979. In 1981 the United States broke off relations with the regime.
Libyan agents exploded a bomb in a West Berlin nightclub in 1986, killing two American servicemen and a Turkish woman, and wounding 229 others. The United States retaliated militarily against Libya and imposed a range of economic and other sanctions.
In December 1988, a suitcase bomb destroyed Pan American World Airways Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, and Libyan agents were the primary suspects. The downing of this aircraft led to the imposition of U.N. sanctions in 1992 against Libya, which had refused to allow the suspects to stand trial.
However, in April 1999, Libya transferred the suspects to the Netherlands, where they were tried by a Scottish court; one of the two was found guilty. Then in August 2003, Libya accepted culpability in the Pan Am bombing, established an account to compensate families of the bombing victims, pledged cooperation with investigators and, in a statement to the U.N. Security Council, renounced terrorism.
The United Nations lifted its sanctions on Libya in September 2003, and families of Pan Am 103 victims then received more than $1 billion in compensation from Libya.
In October 2003, the United States and its allies interdicted a clandestine shipment of nuclear equipment intended for Libya. By December 19, 2003, Libya announced that it would dismantle and eliminate its weapons of mass destruction programs and its ballistic missile systems. British and U.S. experts arrived the following month to oversee and verify the process. (See related fact sheet.)
Consequently, the United States opened an Interests Section in Tripoli in 2004, and then removed many of the restrictions and sanctions that proscribed U.S. business activities in or with Libya. Libya followed suit, opening its own Interests Section in Washington.
President Bush followed up the actual or impending destruction and removal of all Libya's declared components for WMD and missile programs by terminating the U.S. national emergency against Libya. And Libya then disbursed a further $1 billion-plus to Pan Am Flight 103 victims' families.
In September 2005 at the U.N. General Assembly, Libya's foreign minister issued a joint statement with Rice that restated Libya's commitment to renouncing terrorism. And in 2006, President Bush permitted U.S. Export-Import Bank activity in Libya. A fact sheet on events leading to the U.S.-Libyan rapprochement and text of Rice’s statement are available on the State Department Web site.
For additional information on U.S. policies in the region, see Middle East and North Africa.
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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