Victims or oil .. jeesh wonder which side georgie will take
WASHINGTON — One by one, top executives of American oil companies met privately over the last year with Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, often in his signature Bedouin tent, as they lined up contracts allowing them to tap into the country’s oil reserves.
But now, the new allies are working Capitol Hill, trying to weaken a law that threatens those deals. The Libyan government, once a pariah, and the American oil industry have hired high-profile lobbyists, buttonholed lawmakers and enlisted help from the Bush administration, all in an effort to win an exemption from a law that Congress passed in January that is intended to ensure that victims of terrorist attacks are compensated.
The law allows victims of state-sponsored terrorism to collect court judgments by seizing foreign assets in the United States or money from those governments held by American companies doing business with them. If Libya loses a half-dozen court cases still pending, $3 billion to $6 billion could be at stake, according to lawyers’ estimates.
“Libya is the first country in history to come out and denounce weapons of mass destruction,” said Ali S. Aujali, Libya’s ambassador to the United States. “We have worked very closely with the United States in recent years to fight terrorism. And now to be treated in this way, I feel like we are back to Square One.”
But attorneys for victims of the attacks are eager to put pressure on Libya, which they argue has balked at fully paying some settlements and is still fighting over compensation in other cases.
“This really is a test of wills, a test to see if the United States is willing to stand up for American soldiers and others killed and wounded in attacks or for the oil companies and their profits,” said Thomas Fortune Fay, who represents 37 American military service members injured in the bombing of a Berlin disco in 1986. He has used the new law to file liens against 13 corporations in the United States, including ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum, whose chief executives visited Colonel Qaddafi in the last year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/washington/22libya.html?pagewanted=2&ref=africa
