|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Libya: Qadhafi Suggests Willingness to Allow Inspectors to Visit Industrial Sites By Mike Nartker During an interview with ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulus, Qadhafi suggested that he would allow international experts to visit Libyan industrial sites. Such experts could come from international organizations, similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency, that address biological and chemical weapons. “This is my proposal. Yes,” Qadhafi said. “And I think this is the correct approach,” he added. The United States believes that ever since U.N. sanctions against Libya were suspended in 1999, Qadhafi has resumed trying to acquire chemical weapons equipment and expertise, primarily from Western Europe, according to a CIA report released in April (see GSN, April 11). Libya wants to develop both an offensive chemical weapons capability and an indigenous production capability, the report charges. The report also says that Libya is still working to develop a biological weapons program. Despite these charges, arms control experts told Global Security Newswire yesterday that Qadhafi’s proposal was promising in light of Libya’s recent efforts to re-establish ties with the West. In the past few years, Libya has undertaken several measures, such as providing terrorism-related intelligence to the United States following the Sept, 11, 2001, attacks, to help rehabilitate its image. “Libya [is] making a major effort” to end its status as a proliferator and as a sponsor of terrorism, said Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Such an effort has been consistent enough to indicate that Qadhafi is “serious” with his proposal, Cordesman said (see GSN, May 1). If Libya follows through with its proposal, the results could be more promising than the last time international inspections were conducted in a country of concern, namely Iraq, according to Jeffrey Bale, a senior research associate at the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Bale said yesterday that he doubted Qadhafi would work to frustrate inspectors, unlike former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, because there has been a relative lack of international pressure on Libya to allow inspectors to visit sites there. If Qadhafi had planned not to comply with inspectors in Libya, he probably would not have suggested he was open to inspections at all, Bale said.
| ||||||||||
Back to top
