Nelson Mandela's forthrightness discomfits Tony Blair

[What follows is a report from The Associated Press news agency published on this date in 1999:]

Officials from South Africa and Saudi Arabia will fly to Libya to negotiate the surrender of two Libyan suspects in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner, President Nelson Mandela said Thursday.

Mandela made the announcement at a joint news conference with visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Both leaders expressed confidence that an impasse over bringing the two Libyans to trial in a third country could be broken.

The downing of the New York-bound airliner on Dec 21, 1988, over Lockerbie, Scotland, killed 270 people.

Blair had tried to limit his comments to generalities and grimaced when Mandela announced the pending mission.

He also became uncomfortable when Mandela criticized the Dec 16-19 US and British airstrikes against Iraq. Earlier Thursday, about 50 Muslims demonstrating against the attacks clashed with police in Cape Town, which Blair plans to visit Friday and Saturday.

Still, Blair was optimistic about the chances for the mission to Libya.

“There has been progress ... on an issue that some people thought was completely impractical,” Blair said. Britain sought a breakthrough, “out of a deep respect for the families of the Lockerbie victims and their desire for this trial to happen,” he said.

Mandela said Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and the director-general of Mandela's office, Jakes Gerwel, would fly to Libya in the next few days for talks with Libyan officials.

He said the UN Security Council had agreed to temporarily lift its air embargo of Libya to allow the two officials to fly to the Libyan capital of Tripoli. [RB: Largely through the influence of President Mandela, UK and US opposition to this mission at the United Nations was overcome.]

Mandela has already played a key role in convincing the United States and Britain to support a neutral venue for the trial and has relayed the proposal to Libyan leader Col Moammar Gadhafi, with whom Mandela maintains close ties.

Libya has agreed in principle to let the two stand trial in the Netherlands before a panel of Scottish judges. But the Libyan government demands that they be jailed in Libya if they are convicted.

In Tripoli, an unidentified Libyan Foreign Ministry official said Thursday that his government was still waiting for more information.

“(The United States and Britain) have to answer especially the points on the venue of imprisonment and the lifting of the sanctions,” the Libyan official said, according to a report by Egypt's official Middle East News Agency.

US and British diplomats have said that, if convicted, the suspects would serve their sentences in a British prison and that sanctions would be suspended after the handover.

Earlier Thursday, Blair lashed out at Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, calling him “a threat.”

Mandela noted later that “the charter of the United Nations provides that member nations should seek to settle their problems through peaceful means.”

“Tony here and Bill Clinton, I have no doubt, respect that,” Mandela said.

Blair stiffened at the comment and told reporters: “I have absolutely nothing to add to what I said this morning on that.”

Saudi Arabia/South Africa Lockerbie mediation attempt blocked

[What follows is a report published on Bloomberg News on this date in 1999:]

Saudi, South Africa Blocked From Mediating in Libya Standoff

A Security Council panel turned down a request by Saudi Arabian and South African diplomats to travel to Libya in an effort to break the stalemate over sanctions against the country, Slovenian diplomat Janez Lenarcic said.

“There was no consensus in the committee to approve the request,” Lenarcic said. He would not identify which committee member or members opposed the request. [RB: My sources at the time told me that the opponents were the United States and the United Kingdom.] Slovenia is a non-permanent member of the 15-nation Security Council and its ambassador, Danilo Turk, heads the council's sanctions committee.

Libya has been under United Nations sanctions restricting travel and arms sales since April 1992 because of its refusal to hand over two Libyans accused of blowing up a Pam-Am airliner ten years ago over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. The crash killed 270 people, including [11] on the ground.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is currently on an official visit to South Africa where he's expected to ask South African President Nelson Mandela to urge Libya to accept a US-British plan to try the two suspects in the Netherlands under Scottish law.

Last week US President Bill Clinton said he'll seek to tighten international sanctions against Libya unless it agrees to a trial for the two in the Netherlands by February.

The request for permission to travel to Libya was made by Saudi Arabia's Washington ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, on behalf of the Saudi kingdom.

“As a follow-up to the conversations with the (UN) secretary-general regarding the Lockerbie situation, I'm kindly requesting the permission of the sanctions committee to travel directly to Tripoli and Sirte,'' Prince Bandar wrote in his letter to committee chairman Turk.

He was referring to secretary-general Kofi Annan who last month made a personal appeal to Libyan leader Muammar Al Qaddafi to move forward on the Lockerbie issue which the US and Britain wanted to have settled by Dec 21 last year, the tenth anniversary of the bombing.

Prince Bandar said during the visit he would represent Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. [RB: Abdullah succeeded to the throne in 2005.] Accompanying him would be South Africa's Jakes Gerwel, the director-general in the office of the president, representing Mandela.

The request was made during the new year's holiday. Had it been granted, Prince Bandar and Gerwel along with a staff of 15, would have arrived in Tripoli today, according to the letter, and would have stayed for two days.