Kadafi Reportedly Offering Compensation for Flight 103

Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi has said he is prepared to renounce terrorism, and he has also offered to close down remaining terrorist training camps in Libya and to provide compensation for the fatal bombing of a passenger jet over Scotland, a senior British official said Wednesday.

Douglas Hogg, minister of state in the British Foreign Office, said that word of Kadafi’s proposals came to him from Arab leaders as he sought Arab support to persuade Libya to hand over for trial two Libyans accused in the 1988 bombing that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

In Paris, the Libyan ambassador told the British news agency Reuters that Libya has the two suspects in custody. Ambassador Saad Mujber said their case is being investigated because the evidence presented with the extradition demand was slight.

After a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and earlier contacts with officials in Tunisia and Algeria, Hogg said he had been told that Kadafi has offered to submit the case to international arbitration, to close down his remaining terrorist training camps, to provide details of past Libyan support to the Irish Republican Army and to pay compensation to victims of the Lockerbie bombing.

“We have had a number of messages . . . that (Kadafi) is willing to give us information about their involvement with the IRA and other terrorist organizations and that the colonel was willing to close down the camps in Libya and was willing to accept that terrorism was a policy that he will not pursue,” Hogg said after a meeting with Mubarak, whose close links to Libya have placed him in the position of a mediator.

Kadafi at first rejected the extradition demand. But diplomats here say the Libyan leader is extremely fearful of an American or British military attack and has changed his early defiant attitude to be conciliatory.

“The support from his neighbors was not enthusiastic. Apparently they told him they will try to prevent the Americans from intervening militarily, but . . . can’t do more than that,” said one diplomat familiar with the negotiations following a hurried visit by Kadafi to Egypt earlier this week.

However, Kadafi is still said to be set against handing over for trial the two suspects named in U.S. and British indictments. The two, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi, have been identified by the United States as Libyan intelligence agents.

Instead, the Libyans have agreed to a compromise put forward by several Arab officials to have evidence against the men heard by an international tribunal, perhaps including U.S. and British judges, in a neutral place such as Cairo.

“The Americans are asking for a country to give two citizens of its own to be sent somewhere else, and that is not supported by international law,” said an official of the Arab League, which is convening an emergency meeting today to discuss the issue.

Libya has no diplomatic relations with the United States and Britain, much less extradition treaties. The two Western countries could have a difficult time persuading European nations such as Italy, which depends heavily on Libya for oil and foreign trade, to impose additional trade or aviation sanctions if Libya does not comply with the extradition demands. Not all European leaders appear to support the U.S.-British approach.