Libya was on the verge of building a nuclear bomb before it
decided in 2003 to abandon its program to produce weapons of mass
destruction, its leader Moammar Khadafy said, according to the
country's official news agency.
"Libya was on the point of building a nuclear bomb: That is no
longer a secret," Khadafy was quoted Monday as telling a group of
engineers. "The Americans and the International Atomic Energy
Agency were well aware."
In a dramatic move that has seen his former pariah state
returned to the international fold, Khadafy announced in December
2003 that Libya was abandoning plans to build weapons of mass
destruction.
Khadafy, whose support for revolutionary causes led to his
country being ostracized by the West for more than two decades, and
fingered by Washington as a terrorist state, acknowledged that his
hopes of building a pan-Arab nation had been illusory.
"We spent a lot of money on military projects but not on
civilian projects and reconstruction; our hopes on setting up an
Arab nation were immense but unfortunately all failed," he said,
recalling that Libya had supported liberation movements in Africa,
America and Asia, and the Irish Republican Army.
"This support was indispensable at that time. It was in the name
of Arab nationalism, socialism and revolution. Now all that has
changed and we have paid dearly for it," Khadafy said.
Since Khadafy's surprise 2003 announcement, a string of Western
leaders have visited the North African country, with many eyeing
its under-developed potential oil wealth.
The lifting of US economic sanctions on Libya opened a new era
in relations especially since the Libyan government selected US oil
companies Occidental, Chevron and Amerada Hess in January 2005 to
prospect for Libyan oil and modernize its oil facilities. Libya has
Africa's biggest oil reserves.
Last week, in another commercial deal with the West, Afriqiyah
Airways of Libya signed a preliminary agreement to buy 12 Airbus
planes for an estimated US$1 billion, with the option to purchase
eight further aircraft, Airbus said.
Washington severed ties with Libya in 1981 and began imposing
sanctions, two years after radical students ransacked the US
Embassy in Tripoli.
An alleged Libyan-backed attack on a Berlin disco popular with
Americans in 1986 spurred the US to launch air raids against
Tripoli, killing 41 people.
Libya in 2003 accepted responsibility for the bombing of a US
Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 that killed 270 people,
and agreed to pay families of victims US$10 million each in
compensation.
Last May, Washington renewed diplomatic ties with Tripoli and
formally removed Libya from a US list of states it says sponsor
terrorism. It followed this in July by saying it had lifted
sanctions on Libyan air transport.
(China Daily July 26, 2006)
