Libya

A son of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi is behind a group of foreign and Iraqi fighters responsible for a devastating explosion in northern Iraq, a security chief for Sunni tribesmen fighting insurgents said. At least 38 people were killed and 225 wounded in the blast Wednesday that destroyed about 50 buildings in a Mosul slum. The tribal security chief, Col.

The death of Abu Laith al Libi, a Libyan Al Qaeda chief, has cast a spotlight on the rise of Libyan militants in a network dominated by Egyptians and Saudis, Western anti-terrorism investigators say. Al Libi was killed last week in an American missile strike on a hide-out in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, officials say. In addition to overseeing a paramilitary campaign in Afghanistan, Al Libi had become a top figure in a propaganda barrage on the Internet, according to experts.

Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled energy company, offered to buy all oil and gas available for export from Libya, threatening to grab greater control of Europe's energy supplies. Gazprom Chief Executive Alexei Miller made the proposal to Libyan leader Col. Moammar Kadafi during a visit to Tripoli, the Moscow company said. Libya exported about 1.53 million barrels of oil a day in 2006, almost enough to supply Italy.

Congress on Thursday approved legislation that will allow the State Department to settle all remaining lawsuits against Libya by U.S. terrorism victims. The bill paves the way for mending the last rifts between the U.S. and Libya, but only after the country fully compensates Americans harmed in Libyan-sponsored attacks, including the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the 1986 bombing of the La Belle discotheque in Berlin.

The first U.S. ambassador to Libya in more than three decades arrived in Tripoli on Saturday, in a further sign of the two nations' improving ties. Gene Cretz, a career U.S. diplomat whose foreign postings have included Tel Aviv, Cairo, New Delhi and Beijing, said he would strive to broaden links between Tripoli and Washington. "I'm happy to be in Libya," he told reporters on his arrival here in the Libyan capital, naming business and tourism among his priorities for expanded cooperation. U.S.

Libya will not execute five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death last month, the son of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi said in a newspaper interview. He called the verdicts unfair. A Libyan court sentenced the six on a conviction of intentionally infecting hundreds of children with HIV. Kadafi's son, Seif Islam, told a Bulgarian newspaper that a solution would be found soon to save the six and satisfy the families of the infected children, but he gave no details.

Italy will return to Libya an ancient Roman statue taken from its former North African colony, a gesture Rome hopes will help its own campaign to retrieve allegedly looted antiquities from museums worldwide. The 2nd century statue of the goddess Venus was found in 1913 by Italian troops near the ruins of the Greek and Roman settlement of Cyrene, on the Libyan coast, the Culture Ministry said Tuesday. It is now housed in Rome's National Roman Museum.

The Supreme Court refused to stop the Bush administration from transferring a Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainee to his home country of Libya. Lawyers for the man argued that he faced torture at the hands of the Libyan government if sent there. Abu Abdul Rauf Zalita says he married an Afghan citizen and that after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, he and his pregnant wife fled to Pakistan, where he was handed over to U.S. authorities for a bounty. The U.S.

BP signed a $900-million natural gas exploration deal with Libya, marking the return of the British oil and gas company to the North African OPEC-member state after a 30-year break.

A former Libyan intelligence agent convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, "may have suffered a miscarriage of justice" and should be granted a new appeal, a Scottish judicial panel ruled Thursday. Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi was found guilty of murder in the December 1988 bombing, which killed 270 people, including 189 Americans. He was convicted in 2001 and has been serving a life sentence in a prison near Glasgow.