Libya minister rules out IRA payout
Updated on 08 September 2009
A Libyan minister tells Jonathan Miller that the Libyan government has ruled out paying IRA compensation, and threatens in response to raise the issue of UK support for the US bombing of Tripoli.
Yesterday Downing Street denied a U-turn after Gordon Brown announced the government would help victims of IRA bombings in their campaign for compensation from Libya, which supplied Semtex to the Irish republicans.
Speaking to Channel 4 News foreign affairs correspondent Jonathan Miller in the Libyan capital, Abdulati Alobidi said the Libyan government will "not accept any responsibility" for the IRA attacks and "will not pay compensation".
"In Northern Ireland there is one government. Those who were fighting each other, killing each other, they are one government," he said.
"To come to blame us - send them first to trial. Go to the Irish Americans who were giving them money to even buy arms. Why Libya?"
Mr Alobidi criticised Britain's role in the 1986 Tripoli attack, which led to the death of Colonel Gaddafi's daughter.
"If there is this issue officially with us [over the IRA attacks], we will also put that raid in which they participated against Libya, against the house of the leader and killing his daughter, on the table.
"We will not negotiate with the government. If any citizen, any victim, wants to go to court here or there, we will have to defend ourselves through our lawyers."
He said the Libyan government would not talk to the families if they travelled to Libya to negotiate through the British Embassy.
On the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, Mr Alobidi said he told Labour minister Bill Rammell that "if Megrahi dies in prison, it will have a negative effect on our relations."
He added that Mr Rammel "told me neither the prime minister nor the foreign minister wants Megrahi to die in prison".
He said that if Megrahi had died in prison, then trade between the two countries would have been affected.
"Whatever we had planned to develop in trade and commerce would hault, would stop," he said. "For the future it would have suffered, but whatever was agreed, was agreed."
He denied trade talks were linked to negotiations about Megrahi's release. "It is in front of us whenever we meet with the British government," he said. "But we never linked the signing of that agreement with other areas of business."
