Libya to dismantle its weapons

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has agreed to dismantle his country’s clandestine weapons of mass destruction program and allow international weapons inspections, a move President Bush said was the result of “quiet diplomacy” that will make the world “more peaceful.”

“Because Libya has a troubled history with America and Britain, we will be vigilant in ensuring its government lives up to all its responsibilities,” Mr. Bush said. “Yet as we have found with other nations, old hostilities do not need to go on forever.”

Mr. Bush in Washington and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London announced the deal reached during nine months of secret negotiations in simultaneous news conferences yesterday.

Mr. Bush made it clear that he thinks that his efforts to first use diplomacy, then military might, to force Saddam Hussein to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction program sent a message to other leaders who would follow his path.

“Those weapons do not bring influence or prestige,” Mr. Bush said. “They bring isolation and otherwise unwelcome consequences.

“And another message should be equally clear: Leaders who abandon the pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them, will find an open path to better relations with the United States and other free nations. With [yesterdays] announcement by its leader, Libya has begun the process of rejoining the community of nations,” Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Blair said Libya’s decision is an example of how disarmament can occur with other nations.

“This courageous decision by Colonel Gadhafi is an historic one,” Mr. Blair said. “I applaud it. It will make the region and the world more secure. It demonstrates that countries can abandon programs voluntarily and peacefully.”

Libya reached out to the United States and Britain nine months ago, at about the same time that U.S. and British troops began their 21-day assault that led to the fall of Saddam’s Ba’athist regime in Baghdad.

The Libyan news agency Jana Tripoli quoted Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam as saying Libyan experts had shown their U.S. and British counterparts “the substances, equipment and programs that could lead to production of internationally banned weapons.” These included a “centrifuging machine and equipment to carry chemical substances.”

Libya would rid itself of all that “with its own free will,” the news agency quoted the foreign minister as saying in a statement monitored by the BBC.

For decades, the United States has considered Libya a rogue nation that supports terrorism and has long suspected if of trying to obtain or develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons — accusations Libya had always denied.

In 1986, President Reagan bombed Libya in retaliation for a bombing of a West Berlin nightclub by Libyan-sponsored terrorists that killed two American soldiers.

Libya also took responsibility for downing a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 and agreed earlier this year to pay $2.7 billion in damages to the families of the bombing’s 270 victims.

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