[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 46 (Wednesday, April 12, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2637-S2639]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  SENATE RESOLUTION 287--EXPRESSING THE SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING 
                        U.S. POLICY TOWARD LIBYA

  Mr. HELMS (for himself, Mr. Kennedy, and Mr. Lautenberg) submitted 
the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on 
Foreign Relations:

                              S. Res. 287

       Whereas 270 people, including 189 Americans, were killed in 
     the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, 
     Scotland on December 21, 1988;
       Whereas this bombing was one of the worst terrorist 
     atrocities in American history;
       Whereas 2 Libyan suspects in the attack are scheduled to go 
     on trial in The Netherlands on May 3, 2000;
       Whereas the United Nations Security Council has required 
     Libya to cooperate throughout the trial, pay compensation to 
     the families if the suspects are found guilty, and end 
     support for international terrorism before multilateral 
     sanctions can be permanently lifted;
       Whereas Libya is accused in the 1986 La Belle discotheque 
     bombing in Germany which resulted in the death of 2 United 
     States servicemen;
       Whereas in March 1999, 6 Libyan intelligence agents 
     including Muammar Qadhafi's brother-in-law, were convicted in 
     absentia by French courts for the bombing of UTA Flight 772 
     that resulted in the death of 171 people, including 7 
     Americans;
       Whereas restrictions on United States citizens' travel to 
     Libya, known informally as a travel ban, have been in effect 
     since December 11, 1981, as a result of ``threats of hostile 
     acts against Americans'' according to the Department of 
     State;
       Whereas on March 22, 4 United States State Department 
     officials departed for Libya as part of a review of the 
     travel ban; and
       Whereas Libyan officials have interpreted the review as a 
     positive signal from the United States, and according to a 
     senior Libyan official ``the international community was 
     convinced that Libya's foreign policy position was not wrong 
     and there is a noticeable improvement in Libya's relations 
     with the world'': Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--
       (1) Libya's refusal to accept responsibility for its role 
     in terrorist attacks against United States citizens suggests 
     that the imminent danger to the physical safety of United 
     States travelers continues;
       (2) the Administration should consult fully with Congress 
     in considering policy toward Libya, including disclosure of 
     any assurances received by the Qadhafi regime relative to the 
     judicial proceedings in The Hague; and
       (3) the travel ban and all other United States restrictions 
     on Libya should not be eased until all cases of American 
     victims of Libyan terrorism have been resolved and the 
     Government of Libya has cooperated fully in bringing the 
     perpetrators to justice.

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senators Helms and

[[Page S2638]]

Lautenberg in submitting this resolution on the travel ban and other 
U.S. restrictions on Libya.
  At the end of March, a team of State Department officials visited 
Libya as part of a review of the ban that has been in effect since 1981 
on U.S. travel to Libya. State Department officials were in Libya for 
26 hours, visiting hotels and other sites. Based on the findings of 
this delegation, the State Department is preparing a recommendation for 
the Secretary of State to help her determine whether there is still 
``imminent danger to . . . the physical safety of United States 
travellers,'' as the law requires in order to maintain the ban.
  Because of the travel ban, American citizens can travel to Libya only 
if they obtain a license from the Department of the Treasury. In 
addition, the State Department must first validate a passport for 
travel to Libya.
  The travel ban was imposed originally for safety reasons and predates 
the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. But lifting the ban now, 
just as the two Libyan suspects are about to go on trial in The 
Netherlands for their role in that atrocity, will undoubtedly be viewed 
as a gesture of good will to Colonel Qadhafi.
  After State Department announced that it would send this consular 
team to Libya, a Saudi-owned daily paper quoted a senior Libyan 
official as saying the one-day visit by the U.S. team was a ``step in 
the right direction.'' The official said the visit was a sign that 
``the international community was convinced that Libya's foreign policy 
position was not wrong and there is a noticeable improvement in Libya's 
relations with the world.''
  Libya's Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and International 
Cooperation said the visit demonstrated that the Administration ``has 
realized the importance of Libya'' and that Libya considers ``that the 
negative chapter in our relations is over.''
  Libya's Secretary for African Unity told reporters that the visit to 
Libya by U.S. officials was a welcome step and that `` . . . we welcome 
the normalization between the two countries.''
  The good will gesture was certainly not lost on Colonel Qadhafi, who 
said on April 4, when asked about a possible warming of relations with 
the United States: ``I think America has reviewed its policy toward 
Libya and discovered that it is wrong . . . it is a good time for 
America to change its policy toward Libya.''

  I have been in contact with many of the families of the victims of 
Pan Am Flight 103, and they are extremely upset by the timing of this 
decision. They are united in their belief that the U.S. delegation 
should not have been sent to Libya and that it would be a serious 
mistake to lift the travel ban before justice is served. The families 
want to know why the Secretary of State made this friendly overture to 
Colonel Qadhafi now--just six weeks before the trial in the Netherlands 
begins. They question how much information the State Department was 
able to obtain by spending only 26 hours in Libya. They wonder why the 
State Department could not continue to use the same sources of 
information it has been using for many years to make a determination 
about the travel ban.
  There is no reason to believe that the situation in Libya has changed 
since November 1999, when the travel ban was last extended on the basis 
of imminent danger to American citizens. Indeed, in January 2000 
President Clinton cited Libya's support for terrorist activities and 
its non-compliance with UN Security Council Resolutions 731, 748, and 
863 as actions and policies that ``pose a continuing unusual and 
extraordinary threat to the national security and vital foreign policy 
interest of the United States.''
  These American families have waited for justice for eleven long 
years. They felt betrayed by the decision to send the consular 
delegation to Libya. They have watched with dismay as our close ally, 
Great Britain, has moved to reestablish diplomatic relations with 
Libya, before justice is served for the British citizens killed in the 
terrorist bombing. The State Department denies it, but the families are 
concerned that the visit signals a change in U.S. policy, undermines 
U.S. sanctions, and calls into question the Administration's commitment 
to vigorously enforce the Iran Libya Sanctions Act. That Act requires 
the United States to impose sanctions on foreign companies which invest 
more than $40 million in the Libyan petroleum industry, until Libya 
complies with the conditions specified by the U.N. Security Council in 
its resolutions.
  The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, in which 188 Americans were killed, 
was one of the worst terrorist atrocities in American history. Other 
American citizens are waiting for justice in other cases against Libya 
as well. Libya is also accused in the 1986 La Belle discotheque bombing 
in Germany, which resulted in the deaths of two United States 
servicemen. The trial against five individuals implicated began in 
December of 1997 and is ongoing. In March 1999, six Libyan intelligence 
agents, including Colonel Qadhafi's brother-in-law, were convicted in 
absentia by a French court for the bombing of UTA Flight 772, which 
resulted in the deaths of 171 people, including seven Americans. A 
civil suit against Colonel Qadhafi based on that bombing is pending in 
France.
  The State Department should not have sent a delegation to Libya now 
and it should not lift the travel ban on Libya at this time. The State 
Department's long-standing case-by-case consideration of passport 
requests for visits to Libya by U.S. citizens has worked well. It can 
continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
  The resolution we are submitting today states the sense of the Senate 
that Libya's refusal to accept responsibility for its role in terrorist 
attacks against United States citizens suggests that the imminent 
danger to the physical safety of United States travelers continues. It 
calls on the Administration to consult fully with the U.S. Congress in 
considering policy toward Libya. It states that the travel ban and all 
other U.S. restrictions on Libya should not be eased until all cases of 
American victims of Libyan terrorism have been resolved and the 
government of Libya has cooperated fully in bringing the perpetrators 
to justice.
  I urge my colleagues to support this resolution, and I ask unanimous 
consent that a Washington Post article and editorial on this subject be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Mar. 26, 2000]

                        Stealthy Shift On Libya

                           (By Jim Hoagland)

       In the 11 years since her husband and 188 other Americans 
     were murdered aboard Pan Am 103, Victoria Cummock has learned 
     to listen carefully to the words State Department officials, 
     say, and do not say, to her. So alarm bells went off for 
     Cummock the third or fourth time her latest interlocutor from 
     Foggy Bottom seemed to limit responsibility for the terror 
     bombing to ``the two indicted Libyans.''
       ``Wait a minute,'' Cummock recalls telling Michael Sheehan, 
     head of the State Department's counterterrorism office. 
     ``Your department always spoke of Libya and state-sponsored 
     terrorism being responsible. You are distancing your past 
     position. You now present this as just two wild and crazy 
     guys off on their own? What is going on?''
       In the small space between two bureaucratic formulations 
     Victoria Cummock heard the sound of her husband, and the 
     other victims of a gigantic crime aimed at their nation, 
     being consigned to official oblivion. Your cause is no longer 
     our cause, she and others on the telephone conference call 
     heard Sheehan not quite say. It is to move on.
       Sheehan does not recall the exchange that way. He told me 
     he never made the semantic distinction heard by Cummock, who 
     lives in Coral Gables, Fla. But he also declined to respond 
     directly when I asked if he thought Libya still practices or 
     supports state-sponsored terrorism. ``They are still on our 
     terrorism list,'' was as far as he would go.
       Mere she-said, he-said in an emotion-charged conversation 
     between still-grieving families and a government official 
     given the thankless task of briefing them? Not quite. 
     Whatever the exact words spoken, Cummock did hear the 
     background music being played in a skillful operation to move 
     policy one small step at a time, almost imperceptibly and 
     always deniably.
       The Clinton administration has for more than a year been 
     slowly shifting from a policy of isolating and punishing 
     Libya to a policy of exploring whether the North African 
     state can be rehabilitated and its oil made available to U.S. 
     markets once again.
       In the most transparent move yet, the State Department 
     dispatched four officials to Tripoli Wednesday to judge 
     whether Americans can safely travel to a country that few 
     realize has been off-limits to them since 1981. The 
     diplomats' safe return this weekend will presumably be 
     evidence in the affirmative. Then a recommendation will go

[[Page S2639]]

     to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to remove or keep 
     the official ban on U.S. travel to that inhospitable, barren 
     land.
       Sheehan insistently discounted the importance of this trip, 
     and Albright may yet decide to keep the ban on. But this 
     maneuvering must be viewed for what it is: a piece in a 
     pattern of endgame diplomacy by the Clinton administration. 
     Improving relations with states once known as rogues and 
     lifting or easing sanctions where possible (with the 
     exception of still politically useful Cuba) has become an 
     undeclared but important objective for the Clintonites.
       The push to close the books on the bombing of Pan Am 103 
     over Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, and other Libyan misdeeds is 
     in part a response on the White House from Britain, Egypt and 
     U.S. oil companies, all of which argue the case for rewarding 
     Moammar Gadhafi's recent abstinence from terrorist exploits.
       But it also reflects President Clinton's concern over the 
     diplomatic and humanitarian effects of open-ended sanctions. 
     ``The lack of international consensus on sanctions and the 
     costs that brings has bothered him for some time,'' says one 
     well-placed official.
       There is a case to be made for reviewing and adjusting U.S. 
     sanctions as conditions change: Clinton has in fact allowed 
     Albright to make that case publicly and persuasively on Iran. 
     She has skillfully mixed approval of a trend to internal 
     democracy with strictures about Iran's continuing 
     depredations abroad and let the public judge each step as it 
     is taken.
       But there is no similar intellectual honesty on Libya. 
     There seems to be instead a stealth policy to bring change 
     but not accept political responsibility for giving up on 
     confronting the dictator who would have had to authorize 
     Libyan participation in the bombing.
       Last year the White House overrode skepticism from Justice 
     Department officials and other opposition within the 
     administration and agreed to Gadhafi's terms for a trial of 
     two Libyan underling in The Hague, under Scottish law. Their 
     trial begins in May.
       ``There was an unvoiced sense in these meetings that the 
     Pan Am 103 families had to get over it and move on with their 
     lives. The trial would help with that as well as with our 
     diplomatic objectives,'' said one official who participated 
     in the contentious high-level interagency sessions. ``But if 
     these two are acquitted, it is all over. There will be no 
     more investigations, and no more international pressure on 
     Gadhafi. It is a huge risk.''
       Worse: It is a huge risk that Bill Clinton is willing to 
     take but not explain honestly to the American people. For 
     shame, Mr. President.
                                  ____


                [From the Washington Post, Apr. 3, 2000]

                             The Libya Thaw

       Four American diplomats recently returned from Libya, where 
     they were sent by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to 
     determine whether it is time for the United States to lift 
     the ban on using U.S. passports to visit Moammar Gadhafi's 
     realm. The trip follows other steps hinting at a Clinton 
     administration intention to thaw relations with a regime that 
     remains on the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism.
       The most notorious terrorist act linked to Tripoli is the 
     Dec. 21, 1988, bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, 
     Scotland. The attack killed 270 people, including 189 
     Americans. After an investigation fingered two Libyan agents, 
     the United States won U.S. Security Council approval for 
     sanctions against Libya. Last year the Clinton administration 
     agreed to ``suspend'' sanctions after Mr. Gadhafi consented 
     to hand the two men over for a trial under Scottish law at a 
     special court in Holland. The Libyan dictator did so only 
     after being satisfied, via a U.S.-vetted letter from U.N. 
     Secretary General Kofi Annan, that the trial, which opens May 
     3, would focus on the two suspects and not on his regime.
       In striking this compromise, the Clinton administration 
     made clear that it would not approve permanent lifting of the 
     U.N. sanctions or the lifting of unilateral U.S. sanctions 
     until Mr. Gadhafi meets other demands, such as paying 
     compensation, accepting Libyan responsibility for the crime 
     and revealing all that his regime knows about it. But the 
     administration has not pressed those issues at the U.N., and 
     its diplomatic body language suggests it is trying to wrap up 
     a long battle that has often placed the United States at odds 
     with European allies who rely on Libyan oil.
       Perhaps the administration believes the economic and 
     diplomatic costs of a hard line on Libya now outweigh the 
     benefits. Perhaps Mr. Gadhafi's recent expulsion from Libya 
     of the Abu Nidal organization deserves to be rewarded. And 
     perhaps it is futile to insist that Mr. Gadhafi tell 
     everything he knows about the case, however contradictory it 
     may be to prosecute the two bombers while settling, at most, 
     for compensation from Mr. Gadhafi, who almost certainly would 
     have ordered such an attack.
       Whatever the rationale, the American public is entitled to 
     a full explanation. But, with the exception of a speech by 
     Assistant Secretary of State Ronald Neumann last November, 
     the Clinton administration has kept its Libya decision-making 
     in the shadows. Despite requests from the Pan Am 103 victims' 
     families, it won't release the Annan letter, citing 
     diplomatic privacy. A legitimate point--but it inevitably 
     leaves many wondering whether the letter contains 
     inappropriate promises to Mr. Gadhafi. If there's nothing 
     untoward about the Clinton administration's overall Libya 
     policy, why doesn't Secretary Albright, or, better, the 
     president, do more to help the public understand it?

                          ____________________