Libya Has Right to Be Compensated for Losses Due to Sanctions: ArabsThe Arab League said on Monday that Libya has the right to be compensated for losses resulted from the United Nations economic sanctions.Speaking to a conference on the Lockerbie issue, Arab League Secretary General Esmat Abdel-Meguid said that he has informed UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the UN Security Council of the Arab stand. But Abdel-Meguid did not elaborate on how to carry out such compensations. The UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Libya in 1992 on charges of its involvement in the 1988 bombing of a US Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people. The sanctions were suspended in August 1998 after Libya handed over two Libyan suspects for trial. On January 31, the Lockerbie trial court in Camp Zeist, the Netherlands, sentenced Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi to life imprisonment and acquitted his co-defendant Lamen Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima. The Arab League has since made efforts to press for the lifting of the sanctions on Libya, saying that the U.N. should put an " immediate and ultimate" end to the nine-year sanctions following the verdict in the Lockerbie bombing trial. But the U.S. and Britain insist that a lifting of the sanctions depend on Libya's compensations for the families of the dead and formal acceptance of the blame for the incident. |
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