Lockerbie: Group backs veto threat
By Chris Burns
CNN Correspondent
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France wants Libya to pay more for the 1989 UTA jet bombing over Niger that killed 170 people.
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PARIS, France (CNN) -- A group representing victims' relatives from a 1989 French airliner bombing reiterated its support for Paris' suggestion it would veto lifting U.N. sanctions against Libya.
The group wants a financial settlement similar to the one for the victims' relatives of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.
On Friday, Libya sent a letter to the United Nations accepting responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing.
On delivery of the letter, Libya was to transfer $2.7 billion into a holding account as compensation for the bombing. The letter was also expected to prompt the lifting of U.N. sanctions by the U.N. Security Council. (Full story)
However, France -- a permanent Security Council member with veto power -- has indicated it would block lifting the sanctions unless it was able to negotiate a similar settlement over the 1989 bombing of a French UTA jetliner that killed 170 people.
"In the interest of fairness, France wishes complementary settlement very quickly between the eligible parties of the victims of the (UTA) flight and the Libyan party," the French government said in a statement.
"It is clear that such a solution constitutes for France an indispensable condition for the definitive lifting of the sanctions against Libya."
The French government said Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin called U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Minister Jack Straw to remind them the French want an equitable settlement of the UTA bombing.
That position has angered the United States, Britain and Libya and prompted accusations of blackmail.
On Saturday, Guillaume de Saint Marc, who heads the group of UTA victims' relatives, said a previous payment of up to $33,000 for each relative was only a first step and falls far short of the proposed $10 million per victim of Pan Am Flight 103.
Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people.
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The group says the original court-ordered payment was, in Saint Marc's words, "pocket money to shut our mouths" when France agreed to a temporary lifting of sanctions in 1999.
Permanently lifting sanctions now, the group said, would eliminate any leverage against Libya.
Although Libya never admitted to responsibility for the bombing of UTA Flight 772 over Niger, it nonetheless paid about $30 million to settle claims by the victims' families.
