Libya to End Illegal Arms Programs

Libya will voluntarily abandon its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and allow international inspectors to dismantle its facilities in another effort to shed its status as a pariah nation, the United States, Britain and Libya said Friday.

The decision was announced simultaneously by President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the government of Col. Moammar Kadafi, who urged other nations seeking weapons of mass destruction to follow suit.

Libya “has decided upon its free will to get rid of these materials, equipment and programs and to become totally free of internationally banned weapons,” Libya’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Bush described Libya’s surprise announcement as resulting from careful U.S. strategy and diplomacy, including the decision to invade Iraq in March.

“All of these actions by the United States and our allies have sent an unmistakable message to regimes that seek or possess weapons of mass destruction,” Bush said. “Those weapons do not bring influence or prestige. They bring isolation and otherwise unwelcome consequences.... I hope that other leaders will find an example in Libya’s announcement today.”

Libya’s actions, Blair said in London, “entitle it to rejoin the international community.”

Libya, with its strong-arm leader, has been considered an outlaw regime at least since the 1980s for promoting terrorist attacks on Western targets. But in recent years, Kadafi had appeared to mellow, and Libya was not included among the countries Bush identified as an “axis of evil” -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

Libya’s announcement enables the Bush administration to claim a major foreign policy victory and deflect criticism that the war in Iraq had done little to decrease the broader threat of terrorism and proliferation of deadly weapons.

Libya made its first overture to U.S. and British leaders in mid-March, officials said, on the eve of the military campaign against the government of Saddam Hussein. “I can’t imagine that Iraq went unnoticed by the Libyan leadership,” a senior U.S. official said.

Through ambassadors and intelligence officials in Europe, the Libyan government sent a message to Britain that it was interested in working with London and Washington to relinquish its banned weapons programs.

In the past two months, officials said, British and U.S. experts traveled twice to Libya for a total of more than three weeks and visited its weapons facilities, including more than 10 sites involved with the nation’s nuclear program.

They found that the program was more advanced than had been previously confirmed, the U.S. official said, and that Libya possessed all the equipment and expertise needed to produce weapons-grade uranium.

“We did not see an enrichment facility. We saw the components that would make for an enrichment facility,” the official said. He added that the Libyans did not say they had produced any highly enriched uranium.

The administration official said the nuclear technology was not acquired from Iraq, but he declined to say whether they were able to determine whether its design was indigenous or acquired from another country.

The U.S. and British experts also saw stockpiles of a “significant quantity” of materials needed for mustard and nerve agents, and aerial bombs designed to deliver them.

Officials from the three countries held a final round of talks in London this week that led to the Libyan announcement Friday.

“I think this is an intelligence victory, it’s a diplomatic victory, and it’s a victory for allied cooperation,” the administration official said. “The president’s policies on non- and counter-proliferation have achieved a major victory.”

The official said the administration had not promised to lift economic sanctions imposed against Libya after the Libyan-led bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. But he suggested that if Libya upheld its pledges, sanctions would probably be lifted.

“As the Libyan government takes these essential steps and demonstrates its seriousness, its good faith will be returned,” Bush said. “Libya can regain a secure and respected place among the nations, and over time, achieve far better relations with the United States.”

Libya has also agreed to destroy all ballistic missiles with a range beyond about 200 miles, putting itself within the parameters of international missile control regulations.

A White House statement went even further in claiming credit for Libya’s decision, suggesting the U.S. was poised to confront other “rogue” governments.

“Libya’s announcement today is a product of the president’s strategy which gives regimes a choice,” the statement said. “They can choose to pursue [weapons of mass destruction] at great peril, cost and international isolation. Or they can choose to renounce these weapons, take steps to rejoin the international community, and have our help in creating a better future for their citizens.”

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, White House strategists have focused their anxieties on a perceived dual threat posed by outlaw governments and weapons of mass destruction.

After the fall of Iraq, U.S. officials named North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria as the countries they are most worried about, because, they allege, all four have harbored terrorists and all four have sought to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Bush noted that he had adopted a policy of multilateral diplomacy to address the threat from North Korea, leaving Iran and Syria as the two remaining targets of concern.

Syria offers the U.S. and British governments a promising opportunity to follow Libya’s pattern, said Paul Beaver, a weapons expert and editor of the London-based newsletter Homeland Response, in part because of good personal links between Kadafi and Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“Syria’s next,” Beaver said. “We must be sure not to humiliate Kadafi. But as long as we don’t, we may find some other states willing to follow.”

In recent years, Kadafi has worked hard to get off the list of “rogue nations” and normalize relations with the rest of the world. That effort culminated this fall when Libya formally accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie attack and agreed to pay up to $2.7 billion in compensation to victims’ families. The U.N. Security Council responded by lifting its sanctions.

Libya’s Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi was sentenced to life in prison two years ago for the Pan Am bombing.

Times staff writer Doyle McManus in Washington, special correspondent William Wallace in London and Reuters contributed to this report.