Libya chairs UN Security Council during January
January 3, 2008 (UNITED NATIONS) — Once shunned as a pariah by the West, Libya sealed its international respectability by presiding over the UN Security Council this month and securing a Washington visit by its foreign minister.
The North African country, which earned international censure for its refusal to surrender Libyan suspects in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, formally joined the council Tuesday for two years, along with four other non-permanent members: Burkina-Faso, Costa Rica, Croatia and Vietnam.
The five newcomers were elected by secret ballot by the UN General Assembly last October to succeed Congo, Ghana, Peru, Qatar and Slovakia.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Thursday hosted talks with her Libyan counterpart Abdelrahman Mohammed Shalgam, the first such meeting in 36 years, climaxing a dramatic warming in ties.
US and Libyan officials later signed a science and technology cooperation deal which Washington called “an important step in recognizing Libya’s historic renunciation of weapons of mass destruction” and its return to the world fold.
While presiding over the signing of the deal following his talks with Rice, Shalgam told reporters: “I think Libya needs education, universities, rehabilitation of our infrastructure. That is the real weapon for any nation.”
He also said his talks with Rice touched on bilateral and regional issues, but gave no details, as well as on efforts to end terrorism as well as the violence in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
In New York, after chairing his first meeting as president of the 15-member Security Council for January, Libya’s UN Ambassador Giadalla Ettalhi told reporters: “It’s quite a challenge, but we will do our best.”
Oil-rich Libya had served on the council once before, in 1976-1977.
“For us, a country which was for a decade under sanctions of the Security Council, it is very important and very significant (to be back),” Ettalhi told a press briefing. “It means we are back to normal, at least from the perspective of others.”
The presidency of the 15-member body rotates every month, by country name in alphabetic order in English. It is Libya’s turn this month.
The council is made up of five veto-wielding permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and 10 non-permanent members, elected every year by groups of five for two-year mandates that cannot be immediately renewed.
Ettalhi said the council would discuss the stalled deployment of the UN-African Union force (UNAMID) in Sudan’s Darfur region next Wednesday.
Libya is neighbor to two countries high on the Council agenda, Sudan and Chad, and diplomats say Tripoli can help solve crises there.
Tuesday, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi traveled to Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the Darfur conflict.
Kadhafi’s visit came a day after UNAMID took over peacekeeping in Darfur from an AU mission that failed to stem nearly five years of violence, which claimed an estimated 200,000 lives.
In Washington, a State Department statement said Tripoli’s renuciation of weapons of mass destruction led to a full restoration of ties with the United States in 2004, with the science and technology agreement becoming the first bilateral deal between the two nations.
While presiding over the deal signing after his talks with Rice, Shalgam said the discussions touched on unspecified bilateral and regional issues, as well as on efforts to end terrorism as well as the bloodshed in Darfur.
US-Libyan relations were restored in early 2004, following a break since 1981, a few weeks after Kadhafi announced that Tripoli was abandoning efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
In 2006, the United States announced a full normalization of ties, lifting Libya from a State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism and raising diplomatic relations to the level of ambassadors.
But Libya has yet to complete compensation payments to families of the victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, and a bombing of a Berlin disco frequented by US servicemen — attacks Tripoli has admitted carrying out.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Rice would raise “these outstanding compensation claims” in her talks with Shalgam and would urge Tripoli to resolve them.
Last month, Rice said she hoped to travel at some point to Libya. Ettalhi confirmed that Rice would make the visit “soon” but did not give any dates.
The State Department says John Foster Dulles was the last and only secretary of state to have visited Libya, on May 28, 1953.
(AFP)