Kadafi Began His Overtures More Than a Decade Ago
WASHINGTON — Though the White House is pleased to take credit for Libya's dramatic disavowal of banned weapons, the regime of Col. Moammar Kadafi has been seeking for more than a decade to trade its uncomfortable renegade status for international acceptance.
Kadafi, who in the 1970s aspired to lead the Arab world in a terrorist-led battle against the United States, has recently sought to rebuild ties to the West and to persuade the international community to end sanctions that have hurt his nation's economy and diminished his stature.
But if the former firebrand, now 60, has shown signs of mellowing, it has not been clear to what extent he has scaled back the weapons program he saw as a trump card. Friday's disclosures suggest that Kadafi until recently had hoped to keep his nuclear, biological and chemical programs ticking along, even as he campaigned to win diplomatic and economic support from the West.
Kadafi had sought to build such weapons almost since he came to power 34 years ago. He began amassing an arsenal, and he provoked the United States by taking a leadership role in the 1973 oil crisis, calling for the destruction of Israel and offering haven to a variety of terrorist groups.
The United States began to view the unpredictable, flamboyant leader as one of the most dangerous in the region, and President Reagan called him "the mad dog of the Middle East."
But Kadafi's regime appeared to change its attitude when countries closed ranks against him in the aftermath of the 1988 downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 259 people on board and 11 on the ground. When two Libyan intelligence agents were charged as the principal conspirators, the United Nations imposed sanctions, and Libya was virtually isolated from the world.
Especially since 1997, Kadafi's government has taken a new approach. It has sought to build economic and diplomatic ties with Europe. And after the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, Libya was one of the first Arab countries to support the United States, lining up in favor of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and helping Washington with intelligence.
In September, it agreed to accept responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and to pay as much as $2.7 billion to the families of victims, winning a lifting of the U.N. sanctions.
At the same time, a debate over the extent of Kadafi's weapons of mass destruction continued.
