France is threatening to block the Pan Am 103 settlement in which Libya will accept responsibility for the bombing:
France has threatened in private to veto any U.N. Security Council resolution to lift U.N. sanctions against Libya imposed after the 1988 Lockerbie bombing unless Tripoli boosts compensation for a French UTA airliner blown up in 1989, a U.S. official said on Thursday.
Notice the word "boosts" in there? France already settled this with the unfortunate victims of the 1989 UTA attack sometime back, and now they want more.
"In the interest of fairness, we would like a complementary settlement to be made very rapidly between Libya and eligible parties among the families of the victims of the UTA flight," the French foreign ministry statement said.
Only in the interest of fairness, of course. After all, who can deny that the French are fair in all their dealings with others?
"If there is a vote in the Security Council to lift the sanctions, we ask that France use its veto as long as we have not obtained full satisfaction," Francoise Rudetzki, president of the SOS-Attentats association, which represents families of the UTA bombing victims, told Reuters in Paris. Rudetzki said that of around 1,000 parties eligible for compensation for the UTA bombing, 313 people received payments of between 3,000 euros ($3,378) and 30,000 euros ($33,780).
Granted, this was a tragedy for all affected and they should not have settled for so little, but the French have such long record of, well, surrendering for less. Perhaps this was part of their long-term strategy for siding with our enemies to counterbalance the power of the US.
"I don't think anybody has any sympathy at the U.N. for the French attitude," said a U.S. official. "This is outrageous."
It's a common complaint about France these days.