LIBYA - Focus On Survival-Oriented Policies.

There is still criticism of Libya in the West, but it is largely muted in continental Europe and increasingly in Britain. This is partly because Libya has been spending large sums of money aimed at improving its image in Europe and the US, and also because over the years Qadhafi has distanced himself from groups labelled by the West as terrorist. Through astute diplomacy applied by Qadhafi's technocrat envoys, Libya had begun to make efforts to improve relations with the West - mainly the EU - well before 9/11.

The attacks on the World Trade Centre towers and the Pentagon changed the global situation in a way nobody could have envisaged. One the one hand it put Libya potentially in the crosshairs of the US war against terror. On the other, it provided the opportunity for Qadhafi to make the moves necessary to come out from under the UN sanctions regime. The mature diplomatic and conciliatory approach applied by Qadhafi's envoys has yielded rewards.

Libya is no longer automatically linked with other states the US regards as being part of an "axis of evil" or a state sponsoring terrorism. On the contrary, British Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien visited Libya on Aug. 7, 2002, for talks with the Libyan leader.

In announcing the visit, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said that the decision to make the trip - the first by a British minister since 1983 - followed a "hard-headed assessment that Libya is turning away from international terrorism" that was shared by the US. There was still "some way to go" for Qadhafi to reassure the West but it was right to encourage him to cooperate, she added.

Libya has indeed gone some way since the spokeswoman's comments. It has settled the charges arising from the Lockerbie bombing and the UTA bombing of 1988 and 1989 respectively. (In 1988, Libya was accused in the bombing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the 1989 attack of a UTA French airliner over Niger. A total of 440 people were killed in both flights. These accusations resulted in sanctions being imposed on Libya in 1992 that included bans on airline flights, sales of oil equipment and the freezing of Libyan assets).

Qadhafi's regime paid $33 million in 1999 after a French court convicted six Libyans in absentia for the bombings. In the same year, the UN suspended the sanctions after Libya handed over two suspects in the Lockerbie bombing. One of the suspects was found guilty and the other was released. On August 15, 2003, Libya paid $3 billion to the families of the Flight 103 victims.

The diplomatic benefits, in terms of moves to re-integrate Libya into the international community, were virtually immediate. Within less than a week after the sanctions were lifted on Sept. 12 this year, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar became the first western head of state to visit the country in more than a decade.

Aznar said during his visit that he was looking to the future and not to the past. He stated that he would work to totally normalise the international presence of Libya.

Then in late September, Japan announced that it would provide a $3.57 billion loan to Libya to help it rebuild after more than a decade of sanctions. Nihon Keizai newspaper reported on Sept. 27 that the Japan Bank for International Cooperation would issue the funds for construction of canals and steel mills as well as to help improve infrastructure.

The paper added that the canal and steel mill projects, each with price tags estimated as high as $100 million, were attracting Japanese trading firms and engineering companies aiming to win related contracts.