Libya

WASHINGTON -- A month before a U.S. deadline for Libya to hand over two suspects in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, administration officials say they are planning to seek tougher economic sanctions against the country. After months of diplomatic maneuvering, Col. Muammar el Kadafi has given no sign he will accept a compromise from the United States and Britain on trial arrangements in the case.President Clinton announced in December that the United States would push for tougher U.N. sanctions if Libya failed to hand over two intelligence agents for trial in the Netherlands by the end of February.

Arab leaders visiting with Kadafi on Libya's coastCAIRO, Egypt -- Jordan's King Abdullah and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat were in Libya yesterday for separate talks with Libyan leader Col. Muammar el Kadafi, media reports said.Abdullah arrived yesterday at the coastal town of Sirte, 250 miles east of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, state-run Libyan television reported. Arafat arrived there the night before.Abdullah and Arafat are among the first Arab leaders to fly into Libya since a seven-year United Nations travel ban was suspended this month.

THE PRESSURE is now on the United States to end the unilateral sanctions it slapped on Libya in 1981 for alleged support of terrorism.It should consider doing so, following the lead of Britain, which on Wednesday ended the sanctions it imposed in 1984, after gunfire from inside the Libyan embassy in London killed Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher, who was keeping order at a demonstration outside.Further ensuring Libya's pariah status were United Nations sanctions inhibiting air travel and investment in Libya's oil industry.

SANCTIONS, placed on a rogue regime by the world community for an attainable goal, can work.The delivery of Libyan intelligence officers Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima to United Nations custody testifies to that.The U.N. sanctions placed on Libya starting in 1992 in all likelihood will end formally in three months. Whatever the role of dictator Muammar el Kadafi in the bombing of a Berlin nightclub favored by U.S. soldiers in 1986, the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 in 1988 and the bombing of a French airliner over Niger the next year, Libya's pariah status largely ended when the two suspects were handed over.

COL. MUAMMAR El Kadafi's emissary, Youssef Debri, met me in Cairo last year. He was in Egypt exploring the ramifications of Libya's surrendering two of its citizens to stand trial for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.In formal talks in New York, a U.N. official had managed to narrow the gap between Libya's concerns and the British-American proposal for a trial in the Netherlands, but important differences remained.Now Debri was in Cairo informally, to clarify Washington's terms with a well-connected, retired American diplomat, in the hope of ending Kadafi's equivocation.

NEW YORK -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday that "important progress" has been made toward persuading Libya to turn over two suspects wanted in the 1988 bombing of a Pan American flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.Annan's office issued the cautiously optimistic statement after Saudi Arabia and South Africa said in separate announcements that what South Africa called a "common understanding" had been reached by their envoys with Libyan leader Col. Muammar el Kadafi.

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration is considering a plan to seize some of Libya's oil revenue as a way of pressuring Col. Muammar el Kadafi to hand over two suspects in the Lockerbie bombing for trial, officials said yesterday.But with the United Nations weary of sanctions and even close ally Britain standing aloof, officials aren't optimistic that even this modest step will be approved by the U.N. Security Council.Meeting in December with families who lost loved ones in the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, President Clinton promised to "seek yet stronger measures against Libya" if the suspects were not surrendered.

WASHINGTON -- Deep international fissures and a split among victims' families helped push the United States and Britain into abandoning their hard line on how to bring the Libyans accused of plotting the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing to justice.Officials in Washington and London confirmed last week that after years of insisting that two Libyan intelligence agents be tried in the United Kingdom or the United States, the two countries were exploring a third option: trial in the Netherlands under Scottish law and using Scottish judges.

WASHINGTON -- Abu Nidal, the Palestinian extremist whose reign over a terrorist network in the 1980s made him one of the world's most dangerous men, has been apprehended in Egypt and is being detained there, according to U.S. officials.Abu Nidal apparently was caught after he crossed the border from Libya, where he has been headquartered for several years. The Egyptian government has informed Washington of his detention but U.S. officials know few details, the sources said.Recent reports in the Arab press have suggested that Abu Nidal is ailing and might require advanced medical care unavailable in Libya.

UNITED NATIONS -- Apparently encouraged by African and Asian support for its campaign to have U.N. sanctions lifted, Libya is lobbying the families of people killed in the explosion of a Pan Am jet over Scotland in 1988 in the hope of persuading them to settle the case, the mother of one victim says.Libya has been under limited sanctions forbidding international air traffic because it has refused to turn over for trial in Scotland two Libyan suspects the United States and Britain want to see tried.

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.

Should Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the terminally ill man convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and killing 270 people in 1988, have been released from prison to die in Libya? Yes 6% No 92% Not sure 2% (1,094 votes, results not scientific) Next poll: : Should U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a prosecutor to investigate alleged abusive treatment of detainees by the CIA? Vote at baltimoresun.com/vote

Should Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the terminally ill man convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and killing 270 people in 1988, have been released from prison to die in Libya? Yes 6% No 92% Not sure 2% (1,087 votes, results not scientific) Next poll: : Do you think the federal Car Allowance Rebate System, or "Cash for Clunkers", was a successful economic stimulus program? Vote at baltimoresun.com/vote

: Should the white man accused of beating a 76-year-old black man who was fishing at South Baltimore's Fort Armistead Park be charged with a hate crime? Yes 75% No 17% Not sure 8% (1,520 votes, results not scientific) Next poll: : Should Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the terminally ill man convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and killing 270 people in 1988, have been released from prison to die in Libya? Vote at baltimoresun.com/vote

Carbon dioxide jumps past worst forecast WASHINGTON: The world pumped up its pollution of the chief man-made global warming gas last year, setting a course that could push beyond leading scientists' projected worst-case scenario, international researchers said yesterday. The new numbers, called "scary" by some, were a surprise because scientists thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output jumped 3 percent from 2006 to 2007. The pollution leader was China, followed by the United States, which past data show is the leader in emissions per person in carbon dioxide output.

LONDON -- They came to Libya in search of better-paying jobs. They ended up as pawns in a high-stakes game of geopolitical horse trading. After enduring more than eight years in prison, including the last three under a death sentence, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were freed yesterday despite being convicted of infecting more than 400 Libyan children with HIV -- charges most of the world scorned as a frame-up. But their release came only after the government of Libyan strongman Col. Muammar el Kadafi negotiated a package of concessions that included $400 million in cash for the sick children's families and a pledge to help restore Libya's archaeological sites.

TRIPOLI, Libya -- The fate of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death for allegedly infecting children with the AIDS virus remained in the hands of Libya's top judicial body yesterday, the case having galvanized international scientists, politicians and human-rights groups who say the charges are baseless. The government-controlled Supreme Judicial Council can decide whether to affirm or annul the death penalty for the six defendants, who lost their appeal in Libya's Supreme Court on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence officials and weapons proliferation experts say they are concerned that North Korea could add plutonium to the extensive inventory of weapons components and technologies from which it has sold to such nations as Syria, Pakistan and Libya. Because of North Korea's track record as an eager exporter of arms, some experts are more worried about Pyongyang spreading nuclear technology to other rogue nations than about the possibility of it launching a nuclear attack.

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.

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.