United States Department of State (Washington, DC)
5 September 2008
document
The following is a special briefing on U.S.-Libya relations by C. David Welch, the United States Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, and Robert Wood, Deputy Spokesman for the U.S. State Department. It took place on September 2 in Washington, DC ahead of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Libya.
MR. WOOD: Hello, everyone. Thanks for coming. You all know Assistant Secretary Welch. He’s going to talk to you about the Secretary’s upcoming trip to Libya. Before asking your questions, if you could just identify yourself and your news organization, that would be greatly appreciated.
Assistant Secretary Welch, thank you and welcome.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY WELCH: Hi. Well, Sean announced today the Secretary of State would be visiting North Africa. This will be her first visit as Secretary of State to that area of NEA, and the trip will include a stop in Tripoli. This will be the first visit by an American cabinet officer to Libya in quite a number of years and the first trip by a Secretary of State, to the best of our knowledge, since 1953, which my boss happily points out was before she was born.
We intend in this visit to cover a number of issues. First, we want to advance our bilateral relationship, which we think is in the interest of both countries. Second, we want to pay some attention to some of the regional issues, and by that I mean the ones up in North Africa, broadly speaking, but then also the Middle East in general, and then exchange views with the Libyan leadership and others on international events as well.
Objectives in the other stops, I think, are a little more straightforward, if you will. As you know, we have good relations with the other countries in North Africa. Our relationship with Libya has improved substantially, but I would describe it as very much improved in the course of this Administration. So we think with this trip at this time we can mark a significant advance in America’s relations with that part of the NEA area, with North Africa, in a significant manner.
The bilateral issues vary from instance to instance, but I think most of your attention right now is probably on Libya, and so we can go into that in the questions and answers.
Where are we in the claims settlement agreement? As you know, I briefed you all on this agreement which was signed August 14, a few days ago. The Libyan side has gone through their procedures to establish the fund from their end and to begin to look at the resources for that fund. We’re in touch with the Libyans on this constantly. As you know, we are pressing for the full implementation of this agreement. None of the U.S. obligations pursuant to the agreement kick into effect until the appropriate amounts are deposited in the accounts for the American victims and for the Libyans as well. I expect that, if necessary, the Secretary will take this up during the course of her visit.
We’re also very interested in what else is happening in the North Africa area, especially since there’s been a recrudescence of terrorism there, particularly in Algeria and there’s been a extra-constitutional change of leadership in Mauritania. But we intend also to discuss with those countries developments in other countries in that Sahel region, in particular Chad and Sudan.
So with that brief introduction, let’s open it up for questions. If you would please identify yourself – some of you I know, but I’m forgetful, too.
QUESTION: Dan Dombey, Financial Times. Assistant Secretary, how – could you expand a little bit on how you see the relationship right now? Qadhafi said that it was neither friends nor enemies recently. Is that how you see it? And in particular, how do you address the Libyan rumbling that it hasn’t seen enough from the U.S. when they come to it from the high-level visits that some of the Europeans have brought? Is this visit (inaudible)?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY WELCH: Well, I thought Colonel Qadhafi put a positive gloss on the development of Libya’s relationships internationally, and particularly with the United States, on the occasion of his September 1 speech. That’s an important day for Libyans. It’s their national day. And typically, it’s at that event that you see statements from the leadership or around that event you see statements from the leadership indicating the direction of their foreign policy.
And setting aside the adjectives one way or another that people use on these and other occasions, I thought he was signaling a way forward here. It is true that our relationship in the past has been at times very adversarial, but that has changed substantially. It changed as Libya began to recognize the isolation that it had imposed upon itself from its involvement in past acts of terror, and as it began to look at other important changes in its foreign policy; for example, the decision to foreswear weapons of mass destruction and the means to produce them. Those are really important and dramatic changes in the behavior of a country, and we believe they come as a result of a serious, rigorous and bipartisan effort over a number of years and different administrations to use American influence for the purpose of changing the behavior of countries that once were very, very difficult for us.
This is now, and looking forward I think we can see the path toward a much more normal relationship. Libya is not involved in terrorism anymore and it has foresworn terrorism. It has given up its weapons of mass destruction. In fact, it’s been verified by the U.S. and others. They’re now on – have an elected seat on the Security Council. And we are engaged on a broad variety of topics of interest to the United States, ranging from the decisions that the Security Council undertakes – for example, on an issue like Iran, where I would point out Libya voted positively for Resolution 1803, and there are other elected members of the Council who saw fit to abstain even though they excellent relations – relationships with the United States.
We are also involved with them discussing Sudan. I can remember when I took this job some years ago, that was a rather narrow conversation about a humanitarian corridor from Benghazi into Darfur for the shipment of food products to – for assistance. Today, it’s a broad-ranging and very political conversation about what’s the right way to take on the Darfur issue.
In Chad, Libya was quite helpful to us some months ago, when our Embassy came under siege during fighting, and it facilitated the transit of American aircraft in for evacuation.
In short, we have a whole variety of interests now that we’re trying to represent at the highest possible level. The Secretary’s visit, I think, will be an occasion to move these things forward. I know the Libyan leadership looks forward to discussing this and other things, but we want to listen to them.
This, for the United States is, I would say, a success in our foreign policy. And we believe it’s been built over several administrations, but particularly in most dramatic fashion during this one. And Congress has helped out on this, too. I mean, in all honesty, we are not very fond of some of the legislation passed at the beginning of this year, but it did serve to influence the decisions that Libya made. And when Congress decided that it would empower the Administration to lift the restrictions in that legislation upon certification by the Secretary that the standards had been met, I think that gave an important boost to these negotiations.
So we feel headed into this that this is an area where, again, there’s been very positive movement across the board, and we want to memorialize that with this visit and then look forward to what else we can do in the future.
QUESTION: Sue Pleming, Reuters. Are there going to be any announcements made during this trip? For example, when the Foreign Minister visited Washington in January, there was a scientific and technical agreement. Are you going to announce any specific things?
And then, secondly, are you going to raise the case of Fathi al-Jahmi and other human rights concerns that I know you’ve been pushing on but that still haven’t been resolved, and the trip is going ahead despite those outstanding issues?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY WELCH: Well, there are other issues that are outstanding, too, and we may raise those. As you know, I typically do not give readouts of what are private discussions. But when I mention that we have a variety of bilateral issues that we will be raising, among those is the human rights issue, broadly speaking and specifically speaking.
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