THE BRITISH government has rejected charges that prime minister Gordon Brown refused to press Libya to pay compensation to IRA bomb victims for fear of damaging multi-billion oil and gas deals.
However, Mr Brown said last night that the government will give “dedicated foreign office support” to British victims of IRA bombings in their campaign for compensation from Libya, adding that he “cares enormously” about the impact of IRA terror on victims and that successive governments had tried for many years to negotiate with Libya on the issue of compensation.
The direct involvement of Mr Brown in the affair emerged after letters from him last year to victims’ lawyers were released by Downing Street, in which he said Libya would strongly oppose any such demands.
Victims’ families have argued that Libya, which has already paid $2.7 billion (€1.89 billion) to the families of those killed in the 1988 Lockerbie Pan Am attack which killed 270, should pay damages for supplying the IRA with Semtex in the 1980s.
Since 1999, Libya has consistently turned down such calls, though a Libyan minister last week reopened the issue, saying that compensation had been discussed with London and that “things have not matured yet”.
In one of his letters to victims’ lawyers last October, Mr Brown then said he did not consider it “appropriate” to seek direct Libya/UK negotiations on payments for bombing deaths in Northern Ireland, and Britain.
Libya had earlier “answered questions about its involvement with the IRA to the satisfaction of the UK government” and Col Gaddafi’s regime is now “an essential partner in the fight against terrorism”.
The British had tried to ensure that IRA victims and their families should be allowed to sue Libya for its sponsorship of the IRA in the US courts: “But in the event, this proved not to be possible,” Mr Brown wrote.
US and international law, he said, does not permit the White House to back damages claims by foreign nationals, though British Lockerbie victims did qualify “because of the unique circumstances of the case”.
He went on: “Libya has already answered questions put to it by the UK government about the involvement with the IRA.
“Those answers satisfied the then UK government and Libya has made it clear to us that they consider this matter closed.”
In a second letter, Mr Brown rejected the assertion that the UK would not press for compensation because of fears that it would hurt efforts by British energy companies to win contracts in Libya.
“I assure you that this is not the case. While the UK-Libya relationship does indeed include trade, bilateral co-operation is now wide-ranging on many levels, particularly in the fight against terrorism,” he declared.
Jeffrey Donaldson, one of a number of MPs who intend to travel to Tripoli next month to pressure the Libyans to offer compensation, said Mr Brown had “followed the foreign office line that trade comes before victims.
“I want to know – and the victims are entitled to know – why Gordon Brown does not have the same desire to stand up for the victims of IRA terrorism as George Bush showed standing up for American victims,” he said.
Besides securing compensation for Lockerbie victims’ families, the US has also managed to get $10 million in compensation for Americans injured in IRA bombings in London during the 1980s and 1990s.
The outcome compares sharply with the experience of British victims injured in the same attacks, some of whom received payments of less than £3,000 to compensate them for serious injuries.
The Libyan-supplied Semtex was used in the 1987 Enniskillen poppy day attack, which killed 11 people; the June 1988 bombing in Lisburn which killed five soldiers taking part in a fun-run and another bombing a month later in Ballygawley which left eight soldiers dead.
Colin Parry, whose 13-year-old son Tim was one of two children killed in the 1993 Warrington bombing, said Mr Brown’s actions had made “Britain look very weak and insignificant”.
“It isn’t about the money. It’s about Libya saying ‘we now want to be a normal state’,” Mr Parry said.
