Libya accepted a US-British offer to try two Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing in the Netherlands as long as there were no conditions, a Libyan official statement said yesterday.
Announcing its acceptance Libya said it also insisted on the need to put an end to sanctions, referring to UN economic and air travel sanctions imposed on Libya since 1992.
London and Washington, which previously had been insisting that two Libyan suspects in the 1988 Pan Am flight bombing be extradited to Britain or the United States for trial, declared on Monday they could be tried in the Netherlands, under Scottish law.
The United States and Britain had earlier yesterday rejected a Libyan request to delay the adoption of a UN resolution suspending the sanctions if Tripoli agreed to send the suspects to trial in the Netherlands.
Western diplomats said that Britain and the US were prepared to take into account amendments to a draft resolution requested by Russia and China. But they said there was general agreement that the council should move forward on the Libyan impasse, before next week's non-aligned movement summit in South Africa.
Libya had been expected to accept the new proposals yesterday. However, in a letter to the UN Security Council, the Libyan charge d'affaires, Mr Ramadan Barg, said Tripoli was surprised when Britain and the United States had introduced on Tuesday a draft resolution providing for the conditional suspension of UN sanctions.
The letter, dated Tuesday but released yesterday, asked that "a decision on the draft resolution . . . be postponed until Libya's judicial authorities have completed their study" of new US and British proposals.
The Us State Department later called on Libya to extradite the two suspects to the Netherlands. The department said that the Libyan statement fell short of UN requirements. The statement "does not specifically state that Libya is prepared, as called for in UN Security Council resolutions, promptly to turn the suspects over for trial," the department spokesman said.