database - March 09, 2004 11:59 AM EST

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March 9, 2004 Tuesday
London Edition 1

SECTION: COMMENT; Pg. 21

LENGTH: 774 words

HEADLINE: The Iraq war did not force Gadaffi's hand: MARTIN INDYK:

BYLINE: By MARTIN INDYK

BODY:

Embarrassed, perhaps, by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, President George W. Bush is apparently trying to find another WMD-related justification for his pre-emptive war on Iraq. Thus, Bush administration spokesmen have been quick to portray Libya's December decision to abandon WMD programmes as the direct result of the US invasion of Iraq - or, as Mr Bush himself put it in his State of the Union address: "Nine months of intense negotiations succeeded with Libya, while 12 years of diplomacy with Iraq did not." In diplomacy, noted the president, "words must be credible, and no one can now doubt the word of America" (applause).

The implication is clear. Get rid of one dictator because of his supposed WMD programmes and others will be so afraid that they will voluntarily abandon their weapons programmes. Therefore, even if no WMDs were found in Iraq, we still made the world a safer place. The perfect comeback.

In Muammer Gadaffi's case, this proposition is questionable. In fact, Libyan representatives offered to surrender WMD programmes more than four years ago, in then-secret negotiations with US officials. In May 1999, their offer was officially conveyed to the US government - at the peak of the "12 years of diplomacy with Iraq" that Mr Bush now disparages.

Libya was facing a deepening economic crisis amid disastrous economic policies and mismanagement of oil revenues. In this context, United Nations and US sanctions that prevented Libya importing oilfield technology thus prevented Mr Gadaffi from expanding oil production. The only way out was to seek rapprochement with Washington.

Reinforcing this imperative was Mr Gadaffi's quest for respectability. Fed up with pan-Arabism, he turned to Africa, only to find little support from old allies. Removing the sanctions and their stigma became his priority.

From the start of President Bill Clin ton's administration, Mr Gadaffi had tried to open back-channels. Disappointed, he turned to Britain, first settling a dispute over the shooting of a policewoman outside the Libyan embassy in London and then offering to send the two Libyans accused in the Lockerbie PanAm 103 bombing for trial in a third country.

For the US, the downside was that as the Libyan suspects were brought to The Hague for trial, pressure mounted in the UN Security Council to lift the sanctions. The task of US diplomacy then was to maintain the sanctions until Mr Gadaffi had fulfilled other obligations under the UN resolutions: ending support for terrorism, admitting culpability and compensating victims' families. That was why the Clinton administration opened the secret talks and set one condition - that Libya cease efforts in the UN to lift the sanctions. It did, and at our first meeting, in Geneva in May 1999, we used the promise of official dialogue to persuade Libya to co-operate in our campaign against Osama bin Laden and on compensation for Lockerbie. Libya's representatives seemed prepared to put everything on the table, saying Mr Gadaffi had realised Libya and the US faced a common threat from Islamic fundamentalism and would actively co-operate against al-Qaeda.

On the issue of WMD, the US at the time was concerned about Libya's clandestine production of chemical weapons. Expressing a preference for a multilateral forum, Libyan representatives offered to join the Chemical Weapons Convention and open its facilities to inspection. In October 1999, Libya repeated its offer on chemical weapons and agreed to join the Middle East multilateral arms control talks.

Why did we not pursue the Libyan WMD offer then? Because resolving the PanAm 103 issues was our condition for engagement. Moreover, as Libya's chemical weapons programme was not considered an imminent threat, getting Libya out of terrorism and securing compensation had to be top priorities. We told the Libyans that once these were achieved, UN sanctions could be lifted - but US sanctions would remain until the WMD issues were resolved.

The fact that Mr Gadaffi was willing to give up his WMD programmes and allow inspections four years ago does not detract from the Bush administration's achievement in securing Libya's nuclear disarmament. But in doing so, Mr Bush completed a diplomatic game plan initiated by Mr Clinton. The issue here, however, is not credit. Rather, it is whether Mr Gadaffi gave up his WMD programmes because Mr Hussein was toppled, as Mr Bush now claims. As the record shows, Libyan disarmament did not require a war in Iraq.

The writer is director of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution and, as US assistant secretary of state in 1999, opened negotiations with Libya

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