Lack of surprise greets word of US-Libya ties

dawn: The normalisation of US-Libya relations is a natural marriage of an American administration desperate for friends and oil in the Middle East and a government that needs to open its economy to the outside world, Arab and exiled Libyan observers said.

The announcement was called proof that promotion of democracy is no longer a top priority of the Bush administration, which is grappling to hold Iraq together and has turned attention toward building alliances against a hostile Iran over its nuclear programme. Libya has been ruled by Moammar Qadhafi since he seized power in 1969.

"The timing can be explained by a need for the United States to have a positive breakthrough in the Middle East," said Mohamed Sayed Said, a political analyst at the Egyptian government-run Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. "With Libya, Washington gets a regime that has converted itself from radicalism to accommodation.

"It's self-evident," Said went on, "that there is a retreat from democracy and that in the current atmosphere, the United States is aligning itself with non-democratic regimes. Democracy is not going to be the point of departure for relations between the United States and governments in the region." Read more

2003 :

American analysts .... reject talk of Big Oil dictating US foreign policy. US oil companies own several giant oilfields in Libya, but are barred from exploiting them by American sanctions, Ms Jaffe noted [Amy Myers Jaffe, a senior analyst - Institute for Public Policy].

"The UN has lifted sanctions on Libya, but we have not. If all President Bush was concerned about was American access to oil, he could wave his hand and lift US sanctions, and you would get another million barrels of Libyan oil a day."