Libyan Leader Makes a Visit To France

By ELAINE GANLEY, Associated Press
December 11, 2007

PARIS — Libya's leader, Muammar Gadhafi, received encouraging words from France — and cut deals for $14.7 billion in contracts for armaments and a nuclear reactor — on his first official visit yesterday to a Western country after renouncing terrorism and doing away with weapons of mass destruction.

President Sarkozy described the contracts as rewards for Tripoli's improved behavior.

"We must encourage those who renounce terrorism, who renounce the possession of nuclear arms," Mr. Sarkozy said after a meeting with Colonel Gadhafi.

He did not elaborate on the accords for a civilian nuclear reactor for a desalination plant and armaments. A signing ceremony was scheduled for yesterday evening. Libya also agreed to buy 21 Airbus planes — 10 A350s, four A330s, and seven A320s — but the value of the deal was not immediately given. One of Colonel Gadhafi's sons told the French daily Le Figaro that the Airbus deal was worth $4.4 billion.

Colonel Gadhafi was long known as the champion of armed struggle and a sponsor of state terrorism. But his country started moving back into the international fold with its 2003 decision to dismantle its clandestine nuclear arms program. The same year it paid $2.7 billion to families of the victims of the 1998 Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, then agreed to pay $170 million in compensation to the families of the 170 victims of the 1989 bombing of a French UTA passenger jet.

Mr. Sarkozy is the first Western leader to extend an invitation to the flamboyant "guide of the Libyan revolution" since his falling out with the West in the 1980s.

"France must speak with all of those who want to return to the road of respectability and reintegrate the international community," Mr. Sarkozy said.

Colonel Gadhafi's visit brought protests and complaints, including from Mr. Sarkozy's own minister for human rights.