Angry at U.N., Libyan Crowds Storm Embassies

Crowds chanting slogans against the West attacked foreign embassies in Libya on Thursday, ransacking the Venezuelan Embassy and setting part of it afire and torching cars in an escalation of the crisis over the United Nations’ demand for Libya to hand over two suspects in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Although most of the demonstrations were peaceful, furniture and equipment were hauled out of the Venezuelan compound and the interior of the ambassador’s residence was burned, and stones were thrown through a window at the Austrian Embassy, according to foreign diplomats interviewed by telephone.

At the British and American interests sections, crowds of up to 200 youths screamed anti-Western slogans through megaphones and burned flags before being rounded up by riot police. News reports said that student demonstrators at the Russian Embassy destroyed cars and broke windows.

Venezuela was apparently singled out for the harshest attack because it held the presidency of the U.N. Security Council when it voted Tuesday to impose air travel and military sales embargoes on Libya.

The demonstrations provoked a flurry of anger at U.N. headquarters in New York, where both Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the Security Council protested the obvious attempt to punish a country for the way it had voted at the United Nations.

Boutros-Ghali summoned Libyan Ambassador Ali Elhoudri to his office for a rebuke.

The Libyan, according to the official U.N. account, presented the apologies of Col. Moammar Kadafi’s government to the United Nations and to Venezuelan Ambassador Diego Arria. He also told Boutros-Ghali that the Kadafi government “had appealed for restraint and for the safeguarding of the security of foreign embassies and their staffs.”

The apologies did not assuage the anger. “I hear they’ve offered profuse apologies,” said U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, “but with crocodile tears that are not worth very much.”

Arria made it clear that he did not accept the Libyan government’s protest that it had been unable to control the marauding mobs. “There were four Libyan policemen present when they burned down the (Venezuelan) embassy,” Arria told reporters, “and they didn’t move one finger to help.”

In a statement read by Zimbabwe Ambassador S. S. Umbengegwi, Security Council president for the month of April, the council strongly condemned the attacks on the Venezuelan Embassy and described them as “intolerable and extremely grave events” directed as much against the United Nations as against Venezuela.

Umbengegwi said the Security Council demanded that Libya “take all necessary measures” to protect the property and personnel of all foreign countries represented in Libya and that it “pay to the government of Venezuela immediate and full compensation for the damage caused.”

Although the Security Council had divided Tuesday over approving sanctions, with five countries from Asia and Africa abstaining rather than vote for the sanctions, the troubles in Tripoli galvanized the members into unanimity this time. No one argued for any delay to hear any new arguments from Libya.

The Libyan news agency Jana reported that dozens of people were hurt in clashes with security forces, but foreign envoys said the demonstrations appeared to be orchestrated by the government. Three buses carried demonstrators to the British interests section at the Italian Embassy shortly before noon.

“Obviously it was orchestrated by the government, what else?” said one Western envoy. “I mean, already to know who the permanent members of the Security Council are, how they voted, would you think an angry crowd studies these details?”

At the Venezuelan Embassy, at least one building in its compound was set afire with gasoline bombs, and the contents of the embassy were hauled outside and smashed.

Demonstrators at the embassies of two countries that abstained from the sanctions vote, Morocco and India, brought flowers, foreign diplomats said.

Foreign envoys said the demonstrations appeared to begin simultaneously at about 11:30 a.m., after a day of peaceful demonstrations Wednesday at Tripoli’s Green Square.

While it appeared that only the Venezuelan and Russian embassies suffered substantial damage, nearly all the missions of Security Council members who voted to impose the sanctions were targets of demonstrations of some kind.

Stones were thrown and windows were broken, but none of the others were attacked as seriously as the Venezuelan complex, one Western ambassador said.

At the British interests section, “It was just basically standing outside with loudspeakers chanting away, raising fists, saying, ‘Expletive deleted America, expletive deleted Britain,’ ” said a spokesman at the facility. “Then there were long speeches denouncing both.”

At the Austrian Embassy, a secretary said that about 100 schoolchildren, most apparently between the ages of 11 and 13 and accompanied by adults, chanted and threw stones that broke a window.

An official at the Belgian Embassy, which houses the American interests section, said about 200 people held a rally outside the compound.

“It was all people shouting for Kadafi, against America, and then the police had everything under control,” he said. “I had a chat with some of the people, and they all went away peacefully. Then I went out for a tour of the city, and they gave me a police escort. They were very helpful, and I didn’t notice much in the way of demonstrations.”

The demonstrations were the latest development in a crisis that began when the United States and Britain identified two Libyan men as suspects in the 1988 bombing of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. The U.N. resolution demands that both men be handed over to the United States or Britain for trial, and that Libya cooperate with French authorities investigating the role of four other Libyans accused in the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over Niger.

Libya has refused to extradite the suspects, arguing that demands for them violate its sovereignty and offering instead to try them in Libya or before an “international tribunal.” It has also offered to abide by any eventual ruling of the World Court in The Hague, which has heard but not yet acted on a claim by Libya that the suspects should be tried in Libya.

Meantime, a remark in an Italian magazine attributed to Kadafi, which caused oil prices to rise in some markets, was never actually made, the publication said Thursday.

Europeo magazine Wednesday sent out advance extracts to news agencies of an interview with Kadafi conducted between March 19 and 22 and published Thursday, Reuters news agency reported. The extracts quoted Kadafi as vowing to stop oil supplies to any country joining a threatened U.N. embargo on Libya.

But in the interview itself published Thursday, no mention is made of oil, and Kadafi is quoted as using more general terms of defiance.

Times staff writer Stanley Meisler contributed to this report from the United Nations.