Accept No Plea Bargain From Kadafi : A moral test for the West in the case against Libya

What’s the best way to respond to a country caught blowing up other countries’ airliners? For starters, force it to ground its own commercial planes by denying them foreign landing rights and cutting off shipments of spare parts. That’s the approach that the United States, Britain and France are talking about taking against Libya. But the air sanctions, at least as far as Washington and London are concerned, could be only the first in a series of punitive steps.

The three countries are looking for effective ways to force Col. Moammar Kadafi to acknowledge and pay for his regime’s role in the bombing, three years ago today, of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and of a French airliner over Niger in 1989. Last month two Libyan intelligence agents were indicted in the United States and Britain in the Pan Am bombing. French courts have meanwhile accused Libyan agents of complicity in the Niger bombing. In addition to demanding extradition of the two indicted agents, the United States and Britain want Libya to accept responsibility for the crime, compensate its victims and provide evidence in the case. France endorses these demands while adding that Libya must also prove it has stopped supporting international terrorism.

Kadafi’s response so far has been to proffer the functional equivalent of a plea bargain in criminal court. Like many a hood, he has signaled a readiness to finger others in order to get his own punishment reduced. Douglas Hogg, minister of state in Britain’s Foreign Office, said recently that his country had received messages from Arab intermediaries conveying Kadafi’s offer to “give us information about their (Libya’s) involvement with the IRA and other terrorist organizations . . . close down the (terrorist training) camps in Libya and . . . accept that terrorism was a policy that he will not pursue.” All this, impressive as it be, falls short of what is properly being sought.

The three Western nations are convinced that the evidence they have so painstakingly gathered points indisputably to Libya’s role in the bombings. But, short of a military response--a course that President Bush has pointedly not ruled out--they also know that they cannot alone impose effective sanctions. That is an international task, ideally one to be approved by the U.N. Security Council. Britain and the United States may take their case to the council next month, after the terms of Cuba and Yemen expire. These two countries, both friendly to Libya, are currently among the 10 non-permanent council members.

That would still leave possible opposition from China, which has veto power over any council action. But even if China refuses to approve sanctions, other courses are open. The European Community, for example, could be asked to ban not just air travel but all strategic trade with Libya, including purchases of its oil. So could the Group of Seven, the world’s leading industrial states.

Here is a chance for the West to show its absolute intolerance of terrorism against international civil aviation. It would represent not just a failure of political will but a moral scandal if that opportunity is missed.