Dick Lugar
Contact: Andy Fisher • 202-224-2079 • Date: 5/15/2006
http:// lugar.senate.gov • andy_fisher@lugar.senate.gov
U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Dick Lugar made the following statement today on the removal of Libya from the list of designated state sponsors of terror:
President Bush’s removal of Libya from the list of designated state sponsors of terror and his establishment of full diplomatic relations with Libya are timely steps that will benefit U.S. national security. Libya is a success story for American foreign policy that is the result of years of careful diplomacy aimed at bringing Libya into the mainstream.
Although we still have areas of disagreement with the Libyan government, it has repeatedly renounced terrorism, substantially improved its human rights record, and initiated steps to encourage more foreign investment. It has opened up its weapons of mass destruction programs and is cooperating with the destruction of its chemical weapons facilities. In addition, it is providing substantial cooperation in the areas of counter-terrorism and regional security. The intensive U.S. diplomatic effort to convince Libya of the strategic benefits of this course can serve as a model for future successes with other countries of similar circumstance.
As one of the authors of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which has worked in cooperation with the states of the former Soviet Union to safeguard and destroy WMD arsenals, I am particularly hopeful about the opportunity to work with Libya to safely dismantle its chemical weapons programs. Since its renunciation of WMD in December 2003, Libya has signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and agreed to spot inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Libya has committed to eliminate all of its ballistic missiles beyond a 300-kilomater range with a payload of 500 kilograms and agreed to abide by Missile Technology Control Regime guidelines in the future. Libya played a major role in the exposure of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan’s nuclear black market and continues to provide information on the Khan network. In early 2004, Libya worked closely with the United States on the dismantlement and transfer of the infrastructure of its nuclear weapons program, including their missile delivery system.
The U.S.-Libyan dialogue must be intensified so that we can build on these actions. We have important subjects to discuss with Libya, including energy production, the crisis in Darfur, and efforts to expand economic advancement and trade in North Africa. I commend the valiant efforts of the small U.S. diplomatic staff that has operated the U.S. interest section in Libya since 2004. They have sustained U.S. diplomacy with Libya as we have waited for the decision that was made today. Opening a fully staffed embassy in Tripoli will help facilitate this important dialogue and extend it into new areas.
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Our normalization of relations with Libya also sends a signal to other states that concrete benefits will follow the verifiable renunciation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. Without continued progression in the U.S.-Libyan relationship, the positive decisions that Libya has made on WMD, terrorism, and other subjects would have far less impact in the rest of the world.
In August 2005, I had the opportunity to travel to Libya in cooperation with the Bush Administration to explore the next steps in our evolving relationship with that nation. I reaffirmed to many Libyan officials that U.S. relations with Libya would intensify if Libya continued to cooperate on key issues.
The culmination of my visit was a 90-minute meeting with Col. Muammar Qadhafi at his desert camp near Surt. At that time, he expressed frustration that the promised benefits of normalized relations with the United States were not being realized more swiftly in Libya. He mentioned that other Arab leaders had accused him of giving up too much and getting too little in return. I responded that Libya’s willingness to renounce terrorism and WMD programs had been in Libya’s own interest. I encouraged him to stay the course and reaffirmed that the United States was serious about building a much closer relationship with Libya. I underscored that continued improvements on the human rights front were particularly important in maintaining diplomatic momentum.
Our meeting in the desert and today’s announcement by Secretary Condoleezza Rice are in stark contrast to a photo that hangs in my Washington office. It was taken April 14, 1986 – twenty years ago last month. It shows me sitting with Bob Dole, Robert Byrd, and other Congressional leaders and President Reagan at the White House. He had summoned us to share the news that he was sending American warplanes to bomb targets in Libya in response to evidence that the Libyan government had been complicit in an attack on U.S. military personnel in Germany. Our faces are tense in that photograph, as the President asked for our counsel and we contemplated what the action would mean for the future. At that moment in 1986, I could not have conceived that twenty years later Libya would be undergoing a transformation that would open it to diplomatic recognition, economic investment, and geopolitical partnership with the United States.
The Bush Administration and Congress will continue to foster this transformation. In particular, we need to ensure that more Americans are able to travel to Libya to do business. In Tripoli, I encountered business people from China, India, Europe, and elsewhere, who were there to negotiate energy deals and other commercial arrangements. American companies should take similar steps to explore the possibilities of the Libyan market.
Libya's role in energy production also warrants greater attention from the United States. Libya’s proven oil reserves are estimated at 39 billion barrels (ninth largest in the world). This is roughly equivalent to the reserves of Kazakhstan or Nigeria. It is a third more than all the oil reserves in the United States (29 billion barrels). Libya has four times as much proven oil as Norway, a country with a similar population that was economically transformed by its oil wealth. Libyan officials estimate that more than 60% of the country has yet to be surveyed for oil and gas deposits. Beyond oil, Libyan officials have expressed interest in cooperating on alternative energy sources, especially solar energy.
I welcome the leadership of President Bush and Secretary Rice in opening a new chapter in the U.S.-Libyan bilateral relationship. I look forward to working with the Bush Administration team to enhance the economic and strategic cooperation with Libya and to expand the mutual benefits of this relationship to citizens of both nations.
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