By Nicola Smith - 26th May 2004
Germany and Libya are “very close” to reaching a compensation deal over a 1986 disco bombing, say senior European Commission sources.
“They are very close to agreement. Talks are fairly well advanced and we are all confident it can be solved quite soon,” a senior official told EUpolitix.com. “It is just a matter of technicalities.”
A settlement on the La Belle night-club bombing would remove one of the obstacles to accepting Libya as a fully-fledged member of the EU’s “Barcelona” trade partnership with Mediterranean rim nations.
German and Libyan negotiators have so far failed to agree on compensation for victims of the bomb which a German court ruled to have been orchestrated by the Libyan secret service.
Following compensation deals reached between Libya and France and the UK over 1980s airline bombings, German lawyers had sought a $67.4 million pay out for the victims.
The Gadhafi Charity Foundation has so far only put $22.6 million on the table for the 160 people injured and the families of the three people killed.
But even if the issue is resolved next month as expected, Tripoli’s entry into the EU-Mediterranean trade bloc could still be scuppered if it refuses to release five Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian doctor recently sentenced to death by a Libyan court.
The shock sentencing of death by firing squad for the five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor earlier in May provoked the condemnation of the international community.
“Formally speaking it is not linked to the Barcelona process but member states will never accept Libya into the club in this context,” said a commission source.
The six medics were accused by the Libyan authorities of deliberately infecting over 400 children with the HIV virus when they were working at a hospital in the coastal city of Bengazi.
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy traveled to Brussels earlier this week for talks with the European Commission and the Irish EU Presidency on how to move forward.
While the commission has publicly denounced the judgement, officials close to the talks say it is trying to walk a fine line of putting pressure on the Libyans and offering support to the families of the infected children.
One source said the offer of medical assistance to the families could be one way to ease the tension over the issue but ruled out talk of financial compensation.
“There are other channels…the problem is more cultural, more political,” he said.
The commission says it plans to keep pressure on the Libyans to review the judgement through a judicial procedure.
But it has not yet spelled out the implications for EU-Libya relations if the two month appeal is lost.
“We do not anticipate this situation,” said an official.
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