US Likely to Veto Lockerbie 'blood Money' Offer

Families of British victims killed in the Lockerbie bombing today branded the £7m each family is set to receive in compensation from the Libyan government as "blood money".

But the families of the 270 victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 may never receive the £1.8bn offered in the deal.

Washington officials have already expressed doubt that George Bush would accept the financial offer made by the Libyan government to lawyers for the families of the victims.

Lawyers for the Libyan government have said the families will only receive the money after US and UN sanctions against Libya are lifted.

Colonel Gadafy's regime in Libya is still considered by the US to be one of seven countries actively sponsoring terrorism.

The US has barred Americans from using their passports for travel to Libya and US oil companies from operating there, in addition to UN sanctions imposed on Libya since 1992.

A senior US government official in Washington said that Congress would also probably veto any deal if the payment of compensation was dependent on the lifting of US sanctions.

The Libyan government, which described the deal as "preliminary", will meet senior US officials and the British foreign office minister Ben Bradshaw, in London on June 6 to finalise an agreement.

British families whose relatives died in the bombing said the money would go some way towards "lightening the burden" of the tragedy.

The Reverend John Mosey, who lost his 19-year-old daughter, Helga, in the atrocity, said: "One isn't unhappy to have a little more money, but it's not compensation, it's blood money."

He repeated the families' long-held demands for an independent inquiry into the incident.

Lockerbie local councillor Marjory McQueen, who has become a spokeswoman for the Scottish town, said she was "left numbed" by the news. "You just don't really know what to think about this or how to react," she said.

"It is impossible to put a monetary value on a person's life and I have been left cold by this announcement, even though to some this might sound like a lot of money."

Mrs McQueen said she did not know how the daughter of Mary Lancaster, a Lockerbie resident who died in the bombing, would react to the news.

"She, like everybody else who suffered directly as a result of this, would probably say that she would pay £7m to get her mum back."

Compensation for the 259 passengers and crew and the 11 Lockerbie residents who died when the plane was blown apart has been among several demands of the UN security council in exchange for lifting UN sanctions against Libya.

Last year, a Scottish court sitting in Holland convicted a Libyan intelligence agent, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, of murder for smuggling an explosive aboard the flight on December 21 1988.

Sceptical campaigners wait to 'see the money'

Campaigners say they will only believe that Libya will hand over the money once they see cheques being written to families. Lockerbie family spokesman David Ben Aryeah told Sky News: "It is not an offer until it's been made in writing, considered, accepted, the cheques have been made in writing and cleared."

He said there had been similar announcements over the last six months about the amount of compensation.

Mr Ben Aryeah said he was "puzzled" by the fact this was being left to several firms of US lawyers, commenting: "They're not working for nothing and that is the cause of some puzzlement."

Professor Paul Wilkinson, director of terrorism and political violence studies at St Andrews University, gave a cautious welcome to the move. He said: "This has certainly been a long time coming, particularly when you bear in mind the victims and how young many of them were and how their families were torn apart."

Prof Williams said he hoped the news meant that the Libyan regime was going to continue to meet requirements put forward by the UN.

"Libya has no doubt been motivated into doing this by a desire for sanctions against the country to be lifted," he added.

In addition to compensation for the families, the security council has also demanded that Libya renounce terrorism, acknowledge responsibility for the crime and disclose all it knows about it.