MORE than 100 people have died in an iron-fisted security crackdown in unrest-swept eastern Libya, Human Rights Watch said, fearing a “catastrophe” as protests spread closer to the capital.

Italy agreed today to pay Libya $5bn as compensation for its 30-year occupation of the country, which ended in 1943.

A son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is behind a group of foreign and Iraqi fighters responsible for this week’s devastating explosion in northern Iraq, a security chief for Sunni tribesmen who rose up against al-Qaida said today.

Sudan’s government committed to a ceasefire in Darfur at the start of peace talks, but many rebels boycotted the UN-sponsored negotiations.

Moammar Gadhafi’s long-isolated country has signed contracts worth £200m (€297m) with French companies for missiles and communications equipment, a Libyan official said today.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi urged African, Arab and Western diplomats in his country for a two-day conference on Sudan’s troubled Darfur region to work with Sudanese rebels to find an immediate solution to the crisis.

The United States has decided to restore normal diplomatic relations with Libya after more than 25 years.

FIVE Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor at the centre of intense international negotiations won a reprieve when Libya's highest court overturned their death sentences on charges they deliberately infected children with AIDS.

A French court convicted the youngest son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi for striking his pregnant companion in a Paris hotel, handing him a fourth-month suspended prison sentence and a €500 fine, a judicial official said today.

LIBYA’S leader Moammar Gaddafi last night promised to dismantle his country’s secret weapons of mass destruction programme, British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced.

The UN Security Council will vote on Tuesday on a British proposal to lift sanctions against Libya, though France and Tripoli are still deadlocked on how much to pay the families of 170 people killed in an 1989 airliner bombing, diplomats said.