PARIS, August 14 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The financial terms of a deal for Libya to compensate the families of victims in the 1988 Lockerbie aircraft bombing in return for the lifting of U.N. sanctions should also extend to the kin of those killed by a blast aboard a French U.T.A airliner in 1989, the French foreign ministry said Thursday.

"France considers that compensating the families of the victims of these two abominable attacks is a fundamental aspect in concluding the Libyan dossier at the United Nations," French foreign ministry spokeswoman Cecile Pozzo di Borgo told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"That implies in particular that the indemnities paid in the UTA matter should be judged equitable compared to the compensation that the families of the Lockerbie victims will receive," she said.

Libya was also blamed for the bombing of the French UTA plane, which exploded over Niger on September 19, 1989, killing 170 passengers and crew.

Under the accord Tripoli would pay each of the families $10 million (8.8 million euros) in installments based on the lifting of U.S. and U.N. sanctions and the removal of Libya from a U.S. list of countries viewed as "state sponsors of terrorism."

A New York-bound Pan Am Boeing 747 blew up and crashed over Lockerbie, southwest Scotland on December 21, 1988, after taking off from London, killing all 259 people on board and another 11 on the ground.

Pozzo di Borgo further said that French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin was in contact with his Libyan counterpart and with officials in Washington and London to "remind them clearly of our position and our determination."

She added that France "is not prepared to waver on this."

De Villepin had telephoned his Libyan counterpart, Abdel Rahman Chalgam Wednesday, August 13, and threatened that France would block the lifting of sanctions if it did not receive compensation in the U.T.A affair.

Libya's ambassador to Britain, Mohammed Al-Zouai said the French threat will block the payment of the money.

Secretary of State Colin Powell called his French counterpart Dominique de Villepin late Wednesday to make clear the U.S. position on the proposed agreement, the State Department said.

"We initiated the phone call and I can confirm that Lockerbie was one of the subjects discussed," said Thomas Casey, a State Department spokesman.

France and Libya announced last October that they had agreed to "a definitive resolution" of the U.T.A affair based on French court decisions that convicted six Libyans in absentia and the payment of compensation.

Libya paid 32 million euros to settle the matter in line with the agreement, but only a third of the families of the victims -- kin who registered as civil plaintiffs in the trial -- received any money.

Payments in that case ranged from 3,000 to 30,000 euros -- a fraction of what Libya is to pay under the Lockerbie deal.

SOS-Attentats, a French lobby group that had pressured the government on behalf of the U.T.A victims' families, hailed de Villepin's intervention.

"We hope these contacts will lead to an equitable and speedy resolution in accordance with de Villepin's promises made during a meeting with our association on July 4," the head of the group, Francoise Rudetzki, told AFP.