Italy to compensate Libya for colonial rule

Gadhafi's son says Italy will pay 'billions' to compensate Libya for colonial rule

2008-07-25 14:15:06 -

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) - The eldest son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said Italy will pay billions to compensate the country for three decades of colonial rule, the state-run news agency reported Friday. Addressing government and security officials in a speech on Thursday, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi described the Italian-Libyan deal as historic and said it would be signed soon, the JANA news agency reported. He said «billions» will be given to the oil-rich nation in the form of infrastructure projects, educational scholarships and work to clear land mines that Tripoli says are leftover from the period of Italian rule, from 1911 to 1943.
On Thursday, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said his country was aiming to sign what he described as «a friendship treaty» with Libya by Aug. 31.
The two countries have been trying to negotiate such a deal for several years. Tripoli has demanded a goodwill gesture like building a highway or a hospital to turn the page on the colonial past.
In March 2006, Berlusconi said he favored a highway construction project as compensation. The Foreign Ministry in Rome did not immediately return calls seeking comment on Friday.
On a different issue, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, who runs the influential Gadhafi International Foundation for Charity Associations, demanded that the United States pay compensation for airstrikes in 1986.
That year, former U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered airstrikes on Tripoli and Benghazi that Libyans say killed 41 people, including Moammar Gadhafi's adopted daughter, and wounded 226 others. The raid was in response to Libya's bombing of a West Berlin disco that claimed the lives of two American soldiers.

«Without compensating the Libyan victims ... then there is no way this file will be closed,» Seif al-Islam Gadhafi was quoted as saying in reference to Libyan-U.S. negotiations to normalize relations.
Libya has paid out its own share of compensation for the past, to families of the 270 victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1981. Two installments totaling US$2.7 billion (¤1.7 billion) were paid to the families. The last installment is still pending.
Relations between Washington and Tripoli have improved since Libya's sudden decision after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 to dismantle its clandestine nuclear weapons program under international inspection.
In June 2004, the United States opened a liaison office in Tripoli, 24 years after Washington closed its embassy there.