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Qaddafi Rejects Damages For Lockerbie, Brands Convicted Libyan Hostage
TRIPOLI, Feb 5 (News Agencies) - Libyan leader Moamer Qaddafi on Monday rejected any compensation to the victims of the Lockerbie bombing without Washington paying in turn for those it has wronged, and proclaimed a Libyan jailed by the Scottish judiciary a hostage.
In a discursive two-hour speech from his former home destroyed by 1986 U.S. air strikes, Qaddafi also charged that U.S. and British intelligence had helped prompt a Scottish court to convict Libyan national Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, who he said was innocent.
"It's a political verdict," and a "masquerade," said Qaddafi, five days after the special court in The Netherlands sentenced Megrahi to life in prison but acquitted another Libyan.
Asked about the compensation demanded by the U.S. and Britain for the families of the 270 who died in the bombing, the Libyan leader said "all the victims of the United States, from Vietnam to Tripoli" would have to be paid damages first.
But Qaddafi called for a settlement of the affair, saying: "We want peace, and the United States is interested in finding markets for its products."
"As the trial against Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi is political, an accord is always possible. That will avoid a return to the cold war and confrontation," Qaddafi said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher dismissed the speech, asking rhetorically: "Is it possible to define what he's talking about?"
Boucher insisted that the only way for Qaddafi to get U.N. sanctions against his country lifted was to fully comply with Security Council conditions, including that Libya admit responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am 103 and pay compensation.
"It's really up to Libya to meet the requirements of the international community," he said. "Unfortunately, in the remarks we've seen from Mr. Qaddafi today, we don't see him doing either of those things."
Qaddafi insisted that Megrahi is innocent and that "no formal proof has been made against him."
"We thus consider him abducted and taken hostage to terrorize the Libyan people and to blackmail them even more," Qaddafi said.
"The U.S. and British intelligence services, which carried out the investigation used by the court, also played a pivotal part in the case," he added, saying the Scottish court "could not be held entirely responsible."
Another Libyan, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted and was celebrated as a national hero when he returned to Libya Thursday.
Qaddafi, wearing blue robes and a matching cap and tapping a podium occasionally to punctuate his points, rejected one by one the reasons adduced in the verdict as he spoke from Bab al-Aziziya, the home U.S. warplanes hit in retaliation for Libya's alleged role in a disco bombing in Germany - later found to have been done by another group.
Posters of the victims of the U.S. raid served as backdrop.
Retaliation for the U.S. strike was considered a motive for the Pan Am flight's bombing, which killed 259 people aboard the plane and 11 in the town of Lockerbie in December 1988.
Libyan authorities had earlier created an air of suspense for Qaddafi's speech, with the al-Shams newspaper writing: "Everyone is holding his breath and counts the minutes and seconds until the speech."
The two Libyans left Tripoli on April 5, 1999, to be handed over to Scottish justice, as demanded by the United Nations which imposed economic and other sanctions in April 1992 following the indictment of the pair in Scottish and U.S. courts.
The sanctions, toughened in subsequent years, were suspended after the two were sent to trial, but Britain and the United States demand that Libya pay compensation for the victims before the full embargo is lifted.
Qaddafi called for former South African president Nelson Mandela and Saudi Arabia, which served as intermediaries in 1999, to work again to reach a resolution to the sanctions.
He also said that the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command "has nothing to do with the Lockerbie affair," despite the claims of Megrahi's lawyer at the trial.
From its Damascus base, the movement thanked Qaddafi for putting "things back in their rightful place."
Qaddafi alluded in his speech to recent comments from Robert Black, the Scottish law professor who devised the trial, who said the guilty verdict against Megrahi was based on "very, very weak evidence."
Libya on Sunday denounced the case as a "racist pretext" to prolong nine years of sanctions.
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