U.S. Marvels at Openness of Libyan Leader

When U.S. intelligence agents secretly toured Libya in recent weeks, they found an aging stockpile of mustard gas agent, an early stage nuclear weapons program lacking enriched uranium, and no sign of biological weapons.

Their biggest surprise, U.S. officials said Saturday, was the eagerness of Libyan dictator Col. Moammar Kadafi to welcome them to his long-isolated country and to make sure they saw everything in his arsenal of weapons.

“We visited dozens of sites, and they were very forthcoming,” a senior U.S. intelligence analyst said of the Libyans.

Lest there be doubt who was behind the new era of openness, Kadafi personally met with the American and British agents, usually late at night, and encouraged them to look wherever they chose, U.S. officials said.

“Col. Kadafi was involved from the beginning. He was quite generous with his time. It appeared to us that he was the driver and motivator,” said another senior intelligence official. Both U.S. officials declined to be identified.

In exchange for revealing his rudimentary program of secret weapons, the man whose government admitted responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 was hailed by U.S. and British leaders Saturday as a statesman who had charted a courageous new path for Arab leaders.

“This is an initiative taken by Col. Kadafi, and he needs to be applauded in unqualified terms for what he has done. He has shown huge statesmanship in doing this,” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in an interview with the BBC.

Libya now can “regain a secure and respected place among the nations,” President Bush said Friday in announcing Kadafi’s full-disclosure policy. “When leaders make the wise and responsible choice, when they renounce terror and weapons of mass destruction, as Col. Kadafi has now done, they serve the interest of their own people and they add to the security of all nations.... I hope that other leaders will find an example in Libya’s announcement.”

By winning the favor of Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Libyan dictator has paved the way for the remaining sanctions against his regime to be lifted. He has also opened the door to a return of U.S. companies to his oil-rich land. These oil companies have been barred from doing business there since President Reagan imposed sanctions on Libya in January 1986.

The Reagan administration targeted the flamboyant Kadafi as the most dangerous leader in the Arab world and a chief sponsor of international terrorism.

Reagan, who called Kadafi the “mad dog of the Middle East,” accused the Libyan leader of harboring Palestinian militants who carried out attacks at airports in Rome and Vienna. In addition, Libyan agents were said to be responsible for a bombing at a disco in Berlin that killed two Americans.

In April 1986, days after the disco attack, Reagan ordered U.S. bombing strikes on Tripoli, the capital, and the port city of Benghazi.

Fifteen years ago today, agents of Kadafi’s intelligence service blew up Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 people aboard and 11 on the ground.

Some longtime critics of Kadafi questioned the Bush administration’s apparent willingness to embrace a dictator who sponsored terrorism.

“What does this say about our commitment to human rights and democracy in the Arab world and our war against terrorism?” asked Henry M. Schuler, an expert on Libya at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“His weapons program amounted to nothing,” Schuler said.

“The Libyans didn’t have the sophistication to develop a real nuclear program. But this is a guy who in effect ordered an attack on the United States. It seems to me this sends the signal that if you have money and oil, you can buy your way back into our favor.”

British and U.S. officials pointed to Kadafi as having initiated the new opening, and, indeed, the Libyan leader surprised them by announcing the move without much advance notice.

The British prime minister was in northern England attending to Labor Party business when he received word of Kadafi’s announcement. Blair was rushed to the Durham Cathedral to appear before TV cameras.

“As soon as the Libyans went public, we had to get out there. We couldn’t wait for the next news cycle,” an aide said.

Bush made an unscheduled Friday evening appearance in the White House press room.

Afterward, White House advisors credited the U.S.-led attack on Iraq for prompting Kadafi to abandon his weapons of mass destruction. “In summary, I think this is an intelligence victory, it’s a diplomatic victory, and it’s a victory for allied cooperation,” a senior advisor said in a Friday evening briefing.

At one point, the advisor described Libya’s nuclear program as “much further advanced” than had been anticipated. But when pressed for specifics, the advisor said enriched uranium -- used in nuclear warheads -- had not been found. “We did not see an enrichment facility,” the advisor said. “We saw the components that would make for an enrichment facility.”

On Saturday, agents who visited the Libyan sites said they had seen one working centrifuge, the device used in the enrichment process, but not enriched uranium or the full array of equipment needed to produce it.

The U.S. and British agents spent two weeks in Libya in October and returned for a second visit early this month. They said they found tens of tons of mustard agent, the chemical that produced lung-searing gas attacks on the battlefields of World War I. They also found aerial bombs designed to carry the gas, and a supply of Scud-C ballistic missiles. The missiles are believed to have come from North Korea.

Under his agreement with the U.S. and Britain, Kadafi will get rid of missiles whose range exceeds 180 miles, end his chemical and nuclear weapons programs and allow U.N. inspectors access to his facilities.

On Saturday, Kadafi dispatched a delegation to Vienna to discuss the disarmament initiative with representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency. An agency spokesman said Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei had met with a top Libyan official “to discuss the Libyan government’s desire to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction program.”

In Tripoli, Kadafi’s son, Seif Islam, said the leader had decided to abandon his weapons programs after receiving assurances that the United States would not try to oust him. Once he became convinced that Bush administration officials were not plotting against him, he told them, “ ‘Now we can trust each other and we can open all the files,’ ” said his son in an interview broadcast by CNN.

Special correspondent William Wallace in London and Times wire services contributed to this report.