I don’t really know what to make of this… If we were to play compare/contrast on the technical issues it could get nasty.
U.S.: Libya Lockerbie Statement Not Official Enough](Yahoo News: Latest and Breaking News, Headlines, Live Updates, and More)
The United States said on Wednesday that Libyan statements accepting responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing were not official enough to meet the requirements of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
In 1992, the United Nations imposed sanctions on Libya because it refused to hand over suspects in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner, which killed 270 people.
After Libya agreed to a Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands, the United Nations suspended the sanctions in 1999 and set conditions for lifting them permanently. The conditions required Libya to take responsibility for the bombing, pay compensation and “renounce terrorism.”
On Wednesday, Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abderrahmane Chalgam said the Libyan government had accepted responsibility for the bombing and had set up a fund to compensate the victims’ families.
Chalgam did not mention a direct government role collecting compensation funds but said Libyan and foreign companies were “participating in the collection of the money.”
Cofer Black, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, told reporters: "What is important is whether Libya meets the U.N. requirements … not what their officials might say to the press.
“Libya knows what it needs to do and there are no shortcuts,” Black said during a briefing on the annual “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report. He did not elaborate.
It was not immediately clear if Libya could meet the requirements by saying the same things in official documents.
A State Department official said the United States had heard nothing official from Libya since a trilateral meeting with Libyan and British officials in London in March.
Following the Libyan announcement, a British official said Washington and London were discussing the matter.
The sticking point in the trilateral talks had been Libya’s acceptance of government responsibility rather than the compensation, which was largely agreed upon last year and could total about $2.7 billion, Tripoli-based diplomats said.
A Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands convicted Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Basset al-Magrahi for the crime in 2001.