“The New Libya” Backs a U.S.-Libyan Dialogue Group

By Eugene Bird

Formation of a U.S.-Libya Dialogue Group was announced at a conference held on neutral territory in Malta during the last week of August. The new group will aim at improving business and political relations between the two countries after nearly two decades of sanctions and disagreements connected initially with Libyan actions in support of the Palestinian cause and culminating in the explosion of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

“Within the legal context allowed us, the American side in the dialogue will seek to sponsor a major conference in the United States within the next three to six months, perhaps even in Washington, DC, as a first step in ending the eight years of stringent sanctions and almost 20 years of bad relations,” said Dr. Charles MacDonald of Florida International University, American co-chair of the new group.

However, United Nations sanctions now in suspension but not yet removed, U.S. sanctions that will not be suspended or removed at least until the end of the trial of the two Libyans before three Scottish judges sitting in the Netherlands and slated to begin in December, and the probability of civil actions by survivors of the Flight 103 victims that could threaten Libyan assets in the United States for years to come, make prospects for renewing full relations between the two countries more complex than they appeared at Malta.

No Sovereign Immunity

A U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting civil suits in American courts against “terror designated states” despite sovereign immunity preventing such suits under international law, has opened the door for major claims against Libya that may take years to wend their way through the courts, if Libya chooses to defend itself. More likely is a negotiated compensation, which Libya has already provided in the case of a downed French passenger aircraft which exploded over Africa in December 1989.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision followed a campaign organized by the government of Israel’s lobbying groups which urged the court to make it possible to pursue civil suits against the states designated as supporting terror in the Anti-Terror Act of 1995. Such suits could tie up closer relations with Libya or other Middle East states for years or decades. What worries legal experts is that the U.S. itself might be faced with similar suits in various parts of the world where American air power has resulted in civilian deaths, such as Serbia or Iraq.

New Sanctions Legislation

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-NC) is drafting new sanctions legislation that is aimed at regulating the presidential use of sanctions but it is not expected to be ready for the remaining part of this session of Congress. Nor is it expected to be at all flexible or to reduce the present sanctions being used throughout the Middle East against the “rogue” states.

Department of State and congressional sources are hopeful that the present chaotic use of sanctions by foreign policy advisers to the president will become more in accord with international practices and have better ground rules. Libyan diplomats have as their goal a lifting of U.S. sanctions within one year. But the blunt instrument of sanctions instead of the negotiations traditionally favored by professional diplomats is now applied in one form or another by the United States against 50 of the 194 countries in the world.

Third Track Dialogue

The three-day “Third Track” dialogue conference in Malta was the second such conference this year to be sponsored by the School of Management at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands headed by Dr. M.S. El-Namaki. Considerable pressure was placed on the university by supporters of Israel in Holland to cancel the conference, at least until after the trial of the two Libyans in Holland ends sometime next year. The University refused to do so.

Americans who attended the Malta conference included former Assistant Secretary of State Herman J. Cohen and John Szymkowicz, a Washington lawyer who has been involved in the various aspects of the negotiations with Libya on the Pan American case.

The Libyan co-chairman of the new dialogue group, which is incorporated in the U.S., is Professor Dr. Khalifa Issa Salem, former director of the Libyan Foreign Media Bureau in Tripoli. He is now a lecturer at Al Fath Universityin Tripoli.

In a speech to the conference in Malta, Dr. Saleh Ibrahim, director of the Academy of Graduate Studies and Economic Research at Tripoli, noted that the U.K. and the European Community have removed, not just suspended, all sanctions against Libya. He emphasized that Libyan political leaders were taking very useful initiatives with African states, including helping to settle one of the tougher problems between African leaders and hosting the Organization of African States on Sept. 7 in Tripoli.

Post-Trial May End U.S. Sanctions

Preliminaries for removal of U.S. sanctions against Libya would, of course, include complete cooperation during the coming trial in The Hague, payment of compensation for the victims of the Pan American flight if the trial results in convictions, and continued proof of non-involvement in terror around the world. Allegations of involvement by other Libyan officials that might result from the trial, or following the trail of evidence of their involvement could also complicate the opening to Libya.

Libya has changed in the last decade but the political and economic system remains centralized even though thousands of Libyans have returned from American and other foreign universities and provide a leaven that is continuing to create far more dialogue internally, according to those attending the Malta conference. Said one of the conference participants, “We are like Iran in some ways, split between traditionalists who oppose opening to the West and the release for trial of those charged with the Pan American bombing as a humiliation, and the more modern, young, and Western- educated who want to see a different Libya develop out of this experience.”

Tradition vs. Modern

Another of the Libyan delegates, all of whom were nominally young private citizens from across the social spectrum of Libyans, said that when their government agreed to send the two Libyans accused of involvement in the explosion of Pan Am 103 for trial outside the country, Libyans plunged into a full-scale debate. Libyans were almost evenly divided on whether the government of Libya should have folded on the issue, he said. And the two sides were not divided by class, origin, and sex, or even by traditionalists versus modernists.

There are today in Libya a total of 100,000 students in colleges and universities. About 60 percent of them are women and they participate in the same classes with men. This is not Iran. Libya’s educators now seem concerned that so many young men refuse to go to college, thinking it is a waste of time since there are few good or appropriate jobs for them when they graduate.

The dialogue group hopes to operate not only to change the American perception of what is described as a New Libya, but to change some of the Libyan perceptions of America and of free enterprise in the third millennium. Getting past the Lockerbie issue, the group aims at maintaining a dialogue with key figures in both countries as part of their efforts in third-track diplomacy.

Eugene Bird, a retired foreign service officer, is president of the Council for the National Interest and diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Report.