NEWS
By Daniel Morris | September 1, 2009
In my graduate class on Arab politics, we would often puzzle over decisions autocratic leaders have made that did not seem to make sense, either in moral or strategic terms. It was often tempting to take the intellectually lazy route and think they were simply crazy or stupid. In order to make the discussion more productive, the professor would suggest that we assume the leaders are at least as smart as ourselves. In recent weeks, the only person convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing was released to Libyan soil, where he received a jubilant welcome organized by Libyan leader Col. Muammar el Kadafi.
NEWS
By DAVID MACK | May 24, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The restoration of diplomatic relations with Libya ends more than three decades of hostility. It sends a strong signal to Iran and other countries that abandoning terrorism and weapons of mass destruction can lead to similar benefits. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States has shown how we would respond to governments we perceived as uncooperative in the war on terrorism. Absent a clear example of how a country with a bad past could change course and stand with the United States, some governments might have concluded that the best strategy was to follow the North Korean example of covertly developing a weapon to gain concessions at the negotiating table.
NEWS
By DANIEL COHEN | May 18, 2006
How would you feel if the man who murdered your child was forgiven - and embraced - by your government? That's what happened to me Monday when the State Department announced that Col. Muammar el Kadafi's Libya was being taken off the list of state sponsors of terrorism and that the United States would establish full and friendly relations with the regime. Libya, you may recall, was the country that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988. The blast killed 270 people, 189 of them Americans.
NEWS
By Suzanne Gershowitz | April 15, 2005
WASHINGTON - In the corridors of the State Department, diplomats joust for the honor of being Washington's first ambassador to Libya in more than 30 years. It has been nearly a year since President Bush ended sanctions on Libya and announced his intention to open a diplomatic office in Tripoli. That speech followed a year of heady diplomacy, culminating March 12, 2003, with Mr. Bush's comment that "Libya is beginning to change her attitude about a lot of things." As evidence of Libyan strongman Muammar el Kadafi's good will, he cited the case of Libya's most famous dissident.
NEWS
By NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE | December 9, 2004
TRIPOLI, Libya - Libya will not execute five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who were sentenced to death earlier this year for infecting more than 400 children with HIV in 1998, according to the son of the Libyan leader, Col Muammar el Kadafi. "No one is going to execute anyone," the Libyan leaders' son, Seif al-Islam Kadafi, said yesterday. This month or next, he said, the country will pass new laws that will limit capital punishment to a small number of crimes. "Capital punishment is going to be finished," he said.
NEWS
By NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE | April 24, 2004
WASHINGTON - President Bush eased economic sanctions on Libya yesterday, rewarding Col. Muammar el Kadafi for renouncing weapons of mass destruction and opening opportunities for American companies to do business in his nation. The action, announced by the White House while Bush was in Florida, had been anticipated for many weeks. But it was nonetheless drastic, since it softened a hard-line policy that has been in place for years against a leader who was once an enemy of the United States.
NEWS
By NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE | March 26, 2004
LONDON - With a handshake that was beamed round the world, Prime Minister Tony Blair officially ended Libya's three decades of isolation by greeting Col. Muammar el Kadafi yesterday in a tent near the capital, Tripoli, where they exchanged promises to fight the terrorism that Kadafi once enthusiastically supported. Some relatives of those who died in 1988 in the bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, criticized Blair's journey. Libyan intelligence was blamed for that act, and Libya admitted responsibility in September.
NEWS
By MICHAEL OLESKER | March 5, 2004
WHILE nobody was paying attention, Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger slipped into Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. In a desert tent, he met with Col. Muammar el Kadafi and talked about Libya's abandonment of nuclear weapons. In Afghanistan, he met with President Hamid Karzai and talked about the search for Osama bin Laden. In Iraq, he met with soldiers from Maryland who wondered what awaits them when they return home. Ruppersberger was part of a small congressional delegation -- members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence -- that went to the Middle East last month to assess U.S. intelligence there, and to receive briefings from military commanders and diplomats.
NEWS
By HEARST NEWSPAPERS | February 15, 2004
A U.S. congressional delegation told Col. Muammar el Kadafi that he must acknowledge responsibility for the attack on Pan Am 103 in order for U.S.-Libyan relations to improve, a member of the delegation said yesterday. Rep. John E. Sweeney, a New York Republican, was part of a six-member delegation that met with Kadafi for two hours in the Libyan desert Friday in a tent compound outside the dictator's hometown of Sirte. Sweeney, in a telephone interview, said Kadafi criticized militants in general, expressed "sympathy" for American losses in the Sept.
NEWS
By NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE | January 10, 2004
PARIS - Libya agreed yesterday to pay $170 million to the families of victims killed in the terrorist bombing of a French airliner over Africa in 1989, clearing one of the last hurdles in its campaign to rehabilitate its image in the West. In addition to the agreement, Libya declared last month that it would dismantle its nuclear weapons program, which it had pursued clandestinely, and invite international weapons inspectors to verify the process. The deal, providing $1 million for each of the 170 people killed in the attack, brings to a close two years of contentious negotiations that at one point threatened to derail a U.S.-led bid to lift economic sanctions against the North African country.