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France confirms major arms deal with Libya
Emma Charlton
AFP
August 3, 2007

PARIS -- Libya has reached a major arms deal with the European aerospace giant EADS, the first since a weapons embargo was lifted on Tripoli in 2004 and a potential source of embarrassment for French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

French defense minister Herve Morin confirmed Friday that a letter of intent had been signed for the sale of Milan anti-tank missiles and a radio communications system worth, according to a Libyan official, €296 million ($405 million).

News of the deal was set to fuel controversy, coming the week after Sarkozy and his wife Cecilia played a key role in brokering the release of six foreign medics sentenced to life imprisonment in Libya.

The five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor were flown home last week after an eight-year incarceration on charges of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the Aids virus.

Sarkozy, who traveled to Tripoli to sign a nuclear and military cooperation agreement a day after they were freed, has presented their release as a success of French and European diplomacy and denied any link to an arms deal.

But Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son, Seif Al Islam, said in an interview published Wednesday that the resolution of the medics' case had paved the way for the signing of major weapons contracts.

The leader of the opposition Socialist Party, Francois Hollande, demanded a parliamentary enquiry to decide if the government behaved inappropriately.

"If there was no exchange, if there was no bartering, why sign a military agreement with the Gaddafi regime, which has been responsible for terrorist acts, which has been a rogue state?" he asked. "How can we accept that in a democracy Nicolas Sarkozy wants to be transparent it should be Gaddafi's son who informs us of the signature of an arms contract, when the foreign minister knows nothing of it and the defense minister is still talking of a 'letter of intent?'" Hollande said.

Morin said that the missile accord was "an agreement between a company and a country," which had long been in the negotiating pipeline, and that the sale to Libya had been approved by the government of Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac.

"When you have been in talks for months and months, when a French interministerial committee says, in February 2007, 'we agree to this sale,' then it is logical for the deal to go ahead," Morin said.

But Libyan officials have sought to cast it as a state-to-state deal with France, marking Tripoli's return to the international fold. France owns 15 percent of EADS - the largest public stake in the consortium.

The comments by Gaddafi's son appeared to have wrong-footed the French presidency, as Sarkozy prepared to leave on a summer vacation, reportedly in the US lakeside resort of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.

The Libyan purchases were agreed with subsidiaries of EADS, which is controlled by French and German public and private interests, and of Britain's BAE Systems.

It is the first arms agreement with a European country since the lifting in 2004 of a European embargo on weapons sales to Libya, imposed following the 1988 Lockerbie airline bombing over Scotland.

EADS confirmed Friday that a deal for the Milan anti-tank missiles had been "finalized" between Libya and MBDA, the world's number one maker of guided weapons systems that is jointly owned by EADS, BAE Systems, and the Italian Finmeccanica.

The French-designed Milan missile is a portable medium-range, anti-tank weapon that has been sold to more than 40 countries since the 1970s.

The company said in a statement that the deal had been secured after 18 months of negotiations and was now "waiting the signature of the Libyan client."
The sale of the Tetra communications system was still in the process of being finalized, EADS added. [/B]

According to a Libyan official, the Milan missile deal is worth €168 million and the Tetra system a further €128 million.

http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070803-073240-3616r