World Notes Libya

Ever since a suitcase bomb blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, a few days before Christmas in 1988, suspicion has focused primarily on Iran and Syria. But now there is new information about another suspect: Libya. According to press reports in Europe and the U.S., French investigators have developed evidence that Libya plotted attacks on American and French targets beginning in September 1988. The Libyans supposedly directed terrorists to put a bomb aboard the Pan Am plane and another on a French U.T.A. DC-10 jet, which blew up over Africa in September 1989. The two explosions killed a total of 441 people.

"Prejudiced and silly," said Libyan Foreign Minister Ibrahim Bishari of the report. Libya's motive supposedly was revenge for the U.S. air strike on Tripoli in 1986, itself in retaliation for a Libyan-inspired bombing in Germany, and for France's defeat of Libyan-supported guerrillas in Chad. U.S. officials long thought Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had got the message and had stopped his once loudly proclaimed support of terrorism -- but perhaps the message received was not the one intended.