U.S. Finds Itself Increasingly Isolated With Libya Policy

President Bush on Wednesday heralded the conviction of a Libyan intelligence agent in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 as a “victory for an international effort” to bring terrorists to justice, and he pledged to isolate Libya until it compensates families for the attack and ends all support for terrorism.

Yet after 12 years of participating in a tightly coordinated campaign with Britain and the United Nations, the United States is itself isolated in its effort to make the government of Col. Moammar Kadafi do more.

Britain has already resumed diplomatic relations with Libya, and British companies are scrambling to get their share of lucrative business contracts with the oil-rich North African country. The European Union formally accepted Kadafi at an Africa-Europe summit last year in Cairo.

The obstacles facing U.S. diplomacy a dozen years after the bombing predate Wednesday’s verdicts as well as the new administration, leaving Washington with limited options.

At his first formal Cabinet meeting Wednesday, Bush said he holds the government in Tripoli ultimately responsible for the attack, which killed 270 people when the jumbo jet blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Bush characterized Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi, who was convicted of murder by a panel of Scottish judges in the Netherlands, as a “high official” in Kadafi’s government. A second suspect was acquitted.

“We’ve made it very clear that this administration is going to hold the Libyans accountable,” the president told reporters.

U.S. diplomats will meet with Libyan diplomats at the United Nations next week to explain what Tripoli will be expected to do before Washington agrees to formally lift U.N. sanctions and remove three sets of unilateral U.S. sanctions imposed between 1979 and 1996.

As part of a deal to get Libya to turn over the two suspects, the United Nations in 1999 “suspended” its sanctions, which restricted diplomatic relations, aviation and sales of arms and some oil equipment to Libya. The U.N. action has allowed resumption of air flights and paved the way for greater international trade because the stigma of doing business with Libya has been removed.

The United States said Wednesday that it will now launch an effort to ensure that the U.N. sanctions are not formally lifted until Libya follows through on other conditions laid out in four U.N. resolutions.

“That means revealing everything they know about the Lockerbie bombing, paying reparations, a clear declaration acknowledging responsibility for the actions of the Libyan officials and clear, unambiguous actions which demonstrate the Libyan government understands its responsibility,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

In private, however, U.S. officials acknowledged that Washington can’t reimpose U.N. sanctions or block the outside world from dealing with Libya even if the Arab nation fails to comply with those conditions. Need and greed have created a de facto gap.

“The United States doesn’t have huge strategic interests in Libya, but the Europeans are energy dependent on North Africa. There’s very little pain in it for us to keep sanctions, but it’d be hard on Europe--the equivalent of us keeping sanctions on Canada or Mexico,” said Geoffrey Kemp, who was director of Mideast affairs for the National Security Council during the Reagan administration.

The State Department insisted that London and Washington remain in “lock step.” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell talked with British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook on Wednesday to develop a joint strategy, Boucher said.

Yet Europe and the United States have different approaches and policies regarding what until recently were known as “rogue states.”

Britain has generally been willing to try to engage pariah governments in an effort to alter their behavior. That strategy has been evident in its relations with Iran as well as Libya.

“The U.S. is much more reluctant to put Libya’s past behavior behind it, in part because of internal politics and in part because [America] has a different role in the world,” said Jon B. Alterman, a Mideast specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Britain, he said, is “a less powerful country and has different politics than the U.S. What the United States says has more weight, so it has to be more careful. The British can be more adventurous.”

The divergent views were reflected in the official reactions to the verdict in Washington and Tripoli.

The United States pledged to continue investigating the case, implying that it may be looking for evidence implicating Megrahi’s superiors or other officials in the Libyan government. The administration will “follow the evidence wherever it leads,” Boucher said.

In contrast, Libya’s ambassador to the U.N., Abuzed Omar Dorda, denied any government culpability and called on the Bush administration to follow the course of other nations and resume diplomatic ties.

“Let’s turn off the page of the past,” Dorda said. “Let’s open a new page to the future. Let’s exchange benefits and interests in place of exchanging accusations.”

The Bush administration may face competing pressures over how to proceed.

Families of the U.S. victims remain a powerful lobbying force, with strong congressional connections. But the administration, which has numerous ties to the oil industry, is expected to encourage Congress not to renew a law that punishes any foreign company that does significant energy-related business with either Libya or Iran. The law is set to expire next summer.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, have been expressing agreement with Britain that Libya has changed significantly since 1988. Last year, the State Department’s annual report on terrorism noted “improvements” in Libya’s behavior and reported no recent terrorist actions.

U.S. officials say Kadafi increased his international respectability by deporting Palestinian renegade Abu Nidal and others linked with terrorist acts and by cutting back financial support for extremist groups.

In May, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ronald E. Neumann told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Kadafi’s support for terrorism had diminished, saying, “Libya no longer poses the threat it once did.”