Libya signs contracts for French missiles
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.
A spokesman for French President Nicolas Sarkozy would not confirm the deal, but said there appeared to be one.
French officials denied any deal to sell military equipment was in exchange for Libya’s releasing six imprisoned medics last month.
The first contract, worth £115m (€170m), is for Milan missiles, and the second, totalling £85m (€126m), is for advanced Tetra communications and surveillance equipment for the police, said the Libyan official. He did not reveal the names of the French companies.
The official said the deal was important because it was the first of its kind that Libya has signed with a Western country since sanctions were imposed in the early 1990s.
In 2003, Gadhafi announced he was dismantling his nuclear weapons programme, and the US and Europe lifted sanctions. That same year, Libya accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270 people, and agreed to pay restitution to the victims’ families.
David Martinon, spokesman for Sarkozy, refused to confirm the contracts during an appearance late yesterday evening on France’s LCI television.
Martinon insisted that no arms contract was signed during Sarkozy’s visit to Tripoli last week, the day after the release of the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor. He said there was “no compensation of that sort by France” for the release of the medics, who had been imprisoned more than eight years for allegedly infecting Libyan children with the Aids virus.
Libya allowed the medics to leave for Bulgaria on July 24 on the French presidential plane in the company of first lady Cecilia Sarkozy – on her second visit to Libya – and a European Union official.
The French president flew to Libya a day later to normalise relations with the one-time rogue state, now looking to rejoin the international community and erase its profile as an official sponsor of terrorism.
Sarkozy announced an initial agreement to sell Libya a nuclear-powered plant, saying the civilian nuclear technology would be used to desalinate sea water.
Under a deal sealed by the medics’ release, the European Union agreed to an aid package and the prospect of increased trade ties. The Europeans also said they would encourage contributions to a Libyan fund set up to compensate families of the infected children.
