Libya promised Thursday to expel or punish terrorists and cut all ties to terrorist groups, but it did not say whether it would hand over two suspects in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
Western diplomats at the United Nations said Wednesday that Col. Moammar Gadhafi's government had agreed to issue a statement denouncing terrorism. But they said U.N. sanctions on Libya would not be lifted until the suspects were extradited for trial in Britain or the United States.The 15-nation U.N. Security Council imposed diplomatic sanctions and an arms embargo on Libya in April and cut off its air routes for not complying with an earlier U.N. resolution demanding Tripoli's cooperation in the bombing inquiry. The council also demanded that Libya end its ties with terrorists.
Libya's official news agency, JANA, carried a statement Thursday saying, "Libya undertakes to expel from its territory anyone who is proved to be involved in acts of terrorism."
"It is prepared to inflict the severest punishment on whoever is proved to be involved in such acts, be it from her citizens or those residents on its territory," the report said.
Gadhafi has said the two Libyan suspects identified by the United States and Britain in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner of Lockerbie, Scotland, are innocent.
In Geneva, Switzerland, a special U.N. envoy said Thursday that Libyan officials told him Gadhafi's government had asked "people's committees" to decide whether to extradite the suspects.
Undersecretary-General Vladimir Petrovsky, who was in Libya on Sunday and Monday, told The Associated Press the process would take four or five weeks.
A decision supporting extradition by the "people's committees," which are considered rubber stamps for Gadhafi's policies, could provide a face-saving way for Libya to surrender the two men.
JANA said Libya also promised to "sever its relations with all groups and organizations which are involved in international terrorism in all its forms."