The UN Security Council will today lift UN sanctions against Libya, 15 years after the bombing of Pan Am 103.
The vote will trigger the release of $2.7 billion in compensation to the families of the 270 people killed in the attack.
Council approval of a resolution lifting the sanctions imposed on Libya over the 1988 midair attack over Lockerbie, Scotland, was assured after France announced yesterday it was withdrawing a threat to veto the measure.
Paris dropped the threat after relatives of the victims of a separate 1989 bombing of a French airliner won the promise of additional compensation from Tripoli.
The United States and Britain first called for adoption of the resolution last month after Libya accepted blame for the Lockerbie bombing, renounced terrorism and agreed to put $2.7 billion into a special account for compensating the victims, after 15 years of international pressure and talks.
The payment - enough to provide up to $10 million to each of the Lockerbie families - embarrassed France, which accepted far less a few years ago for the midair attack on a French UTA airliner over the African nation of Niger that killed 170.
France then threatened to block the US-British resolution unless it could get more money from Libya for the UTA victims.
Libya has never officially accepted blame for the UTA bombing but paid about $34 million in 1999 after a French court found six Libyans guilty in absentia for the attack.
The UN sanctions, including an air and arms embargo and a ban on some oil equipment and financial assets, were imposed in 1992 and 1994 to pressure Libya to co-operate in the inquiry into the Pan Am attack.
Washington was expected to abstain in today's vote for domestic political reasons and has vowed to maintain its own separate sanctions, including a ban of Libyan oil sales to the United States.