Libyia never had nukes. After 17 years of sanctions they were rewarded by the international community for ........
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Tony Blair said that nine months of intensive negotiations between Britain, the United States and Libya had resulted in Colonel Gaddafi's decision to abandon all efforts to develop any chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
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But while last night's announcement came as a surprise, Libya has been making strenuous efforts in recent years to lose its status as a "rogue nation" and to return to the international fold in order to restart trading with the US after 17 years of sanctions.
Before relations between the North African country and the West soured utterly in the 1980s, a number of Western oil companies operated in Libya.
There was also a suspicion that last night's announcements were stage-managed to divert attention from the failure of the US and Britain to discover any WMD in Iraq - the purported reason for the invasion. The US revealed this week that it was in effect giving up the search for such weapons in Iraq.
Libya's willingness to give up its WMD program is essentially another step in the process that was started earlier this summer when it agreed to accept responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and to pay $10m (£5.6m) in compensation to the relatives of each of the 270 people killed in the 1988 attack on the airliner.
Libya has been making efforts to return to the international fold and develop closer trade links with the West since 1999, when it handed over two Libyan suspects to stand trial under Scottish law at a purpose-built court in the Netherlands. In January 2001, one of those suspects, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, was convicted. His co-accused was cleared.
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Libya Gives Up Nuclear and Chemical Weapons