Now That Libya Is Disarmed, Countries Vie To Sell It New Weapons

by Thalif Deen

(IPS) UNITED NATIONS -- Libya's leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, who has agreed to abandon plans to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD), might soon be compensated by the West with other forms of lethal equipment, including fighter planes, fast patrol boats, missiles and battle tanks.

Britain and Italy are urging the 15-member European Union (EU) to lift the decades-old military sanctions on Libya to reciprocate Qaddafi's much-publicized gesture.

On March 1, the EU formally invited Libya to join a group of countries seeking to create a free trade zone by the end of this decade that would link Western Europe with the Middle East and North Africa.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are the first two western leaders to meet with Qaddafi in Tripoli. Both countries are also negotiating arms deals with Libya.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's proposed trip to Libya is also linked to possible arms sales and military aid to that government.

''We are looking forward to an end to the EU arms embargo as soon as that can be agreed within the EU,'' British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters last month.

Not everyone likes the idea.

''Libya should be rewarded for laying aside WMD programs, but arms sales and military aid are not fitting rewards,'' says Frida Berrigan, senior research associate at the Arms Trade Resource Centre, a project of the New School University's World Policy Institute, in New York.

She said that moves on the part of the United States and Britain to lift economic sanctions against Libya are regrettable.

Washington has already eased sanctions on U.S. oil companies investing in Libyan projects, and has said it plans to lift both economic and military sanctions, as well as remove Tripoli from its list of terrorist states.

''Can nations metamorphose from pariah states to valued partners overnight?" Berrigan asked. ''When looking at U.S. weapons export policy, the answer is yes."

Since 1990, Berrigan said, the United States has exported more than $152 billion in weaponry, and many of its largest customers are states engaged in internal and external conflicts -- ''states where political power was taken extra-legally, or where human rights are not adequately protected."

''The onset of the war on terrorism has accelerated this trend,'' she added, pointing out that countries like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan, which were under sanctions because of their human rights records, have benefited from increased weapons sales and huge allocations of military aid.

''The move on the part of the United Kingdom and the United States to lift economic sanctions against Libya is likely to be similar,'' Berrigan told IPS.

The United States imposed its economic and military embargo in 1981, penalizing Libya for fomenting international terrorism. Libya is also one of seven countries on a State Department list of ''terrorist states."

The United Nations imposed its sanctions in 1992 following the December 1988 mid-air explosion of a PanAm jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, which claimed the lives of 270 passengers. The Libyans were accused of complicity in that bombing.

The UN Security Council lifted the sanctions in September 2003, following Libya's decision to pay some $2.7 billion in compensation to families of the victims of the Pan Am bombing.

According to Michael Khatana of Research and Projections Global Inc., a Connecticut-based company that tracks weapons sales and collects military data worldwide, Libya has been circumventing the embargo by buying weapons from shady arms dealers and middlemen, mostly from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics.

''Libya is desperately in need of weapons to modernize its armed forces, equipped mostly with former Soviet-era weaponry,'' Khatana told IPS. He said the country's military requirements include new fighter planes, helicopters, military transports, missiles and battle tanks.

''The Libyan market is ripe for picking -- particularly by the European Union and the United States.''

With a population of about 5.7 million, Libya spends over $1.5 billion annually on military items.

Late last year, its government began negotiations with Italy for the purchase of communications systems, fast patrol boats and night vision technology.

Just before Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi took over the rotating six-month presidency of the European Union on Jul. 1, the organization warned Italy the proposed sale would violate UN and EU military sanctions imposed on Libya.

But Italy argued the ''dual-use equipment'' was for civilian use and would help Libyans stop the flow of illegal immigrants from North Africa to Italy.

As'ad AbuKhalil, professor of politics at California State University, said, ''the new opening towards Libya underscores the hollowness of U.S. and UK rhetoric on democracy in the Middle East," and reveals the true motives of U.S. foreign policy in the region.

''What the United States demands is not democracy or respect for human rights but submission to U.S. will and dictates,'' AbuKhalil told IPS.

Once a regime like the Libyan dictatorship agrees to surrender its sovereignty to the U.S. government, he said, its human rights violations will be forgiven, and oppression will be permitted, provided it is directed against ''terrorists.''

''The Libyan dictator has been learning his lesson: he knows full well that neither the United States nor the United Kingdom care about his violations of human rights, provided he does what he is told, and provided he accepts to open up to Israel, as he has expressed willingness to do,'' AbuKhalil said.

He added that it is not true that Libya changed its stance because of the U.S.-led attack on Iraq. ''Changes in Qaddafi's foreign policy began more than a decade ago, around the time of the first Iraq war in 1991."

''The plight of the Palestinians are no more urgent for Qaddafi, who is busy preparing for the visit by Tony Blair, and later by George Bush himself,'' said AbuKhalil.