London - Libya's ambassador to Britain on Thursday confirmed a deal to pay compensation for the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie aircraft bombing, but said France was threatening to block the lifting of United Nations sanctions on his country, a key condition of the accord.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin telephoned his Libyan counterpart, Abdel Rahman Chalgam, on Thursday and threatened that France would block the lifting of sanctions if it did not receive compensation in the UTA affair," Mohammed Al-Zouai said.
That was a reference to the 1989 explosion over Niger of an aircraft belonging to French airline UTA that cost the lives of 170 passengers and crew.
"We reached an agreement (with the families of the Lockerbie victims) and, according to the timetable, we would pay the money on Saturday and, Monday or Tuesday, the sanctions would be lifted."
"But the French threat will block the payment of the money," he said.
Earlier on Thursday, lawyers representing the families said Libya has signed a deal clearing the way for financial compensation totalling about $2,7-billion (about R20-billion).
Under the accord Tripoli would pay each of the families $10-million (about 74-million) in instalments based on the lifting of United States and UN sanctions and the removal of Libya from a US list of countries viewed as "state sponsors of terrorism".
On December 21 1988, a New York-bound Pan Am Boeing 747 blew up and crashed over Lockerbie, south-west Scotland, after taking off from London. All 259 people on board were killed as well as another 11 on the ground.
In January 2001, a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands convicted Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, one of two Libyan agents charged with the bombing, and sentenced him to life in prison.
However, some relatives of the 270 victims of the 1988 Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie on Thursday said that the compensation agreement distracted from their quest for an independent inquiry. Others feared that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi would be allowed to evade responsibility.
John Mosey, whose 19-year-old daughter, Helga, was on board the flight, said British families still wanted to know how the attack had been "allowed to happen in the face of so much intelligence".
However, Mosey said the agreement was a "great step forward".
"It helps Libya to come along the only road that the UN has left open for them to get back into normal society and the commercial world, and to become a friend rather than an enemy, and that has got to be a good thing," Mosey said.
"On the down side, of course, it is something of a distraction from the main aim of our group, which has been to get an independent inquiry into all the matters surrounding the Lockerbie bombing which have never been allowed to be asked."