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| Europe |
| Libya resumes talks with Germany on disco bombing payout |
| 2004-08-09 |
| Talks over compensation for victims of the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin nightclub blamed on Libya, restarted on Monday but lawyers declined to say if they would produce a result where five previous rounds had failed. A settlement would remove one of the remaining hurdles barring Tripoli from joining the European Union's trade and aid partnership with Mediterranean countries and be another step to ending the pariah status of the oil-rich North African nation. Stephan Maigne, a Berlin lawyer representing victims of the attack said there had been positive signs from Libya, which said at the end of July that a deal may be possible within days. German lawyers and members of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's charitable foundation have been negotiating a deal covering the over 160 non-American victims of the attack and the relatives of the Turkish woman killed but have disagreed over the level of the payouts. Payouts to US victims and their families are the subject of separate legal action in the United States. Maigne said victims were looking for payments of 600,000 euros ($735,500) each for the most seriously injured and 400,000 euros for the others. Two US soldiers and a Turkish woman were killed and more than 200 other people were hurt in the explosion at "La Belle" disco in West Berlin that had been popular with US soldiers. A German court ruled in 2001 the Libyan secret service was behind the bombing and convicted four people, including a former Libyan diplomat. Libya has made big efforts to win over Western countries and emerge from three decades of international isolation. Gaddafi announced in December he was renouncing weapons of mass destruction, a promise which helped earn him a visit to Brussels for talks with EU officials. Libya has already agreed to pay $2.7 billion to families of victims of the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing, for which a Libyan secret agent was convicted. It has also pledged $170 million for the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over Niger. |
| Posted by:TS(vice girl) |