6th April 1999
The SACP salutes the role played by President Nelson Mandela and the South African government in helping to unravel the international impasse around the 1988 Lockerbie air disaster.
The handing-over of the two Libyans to UN officials in the Netherlands is a vindication of President Mandela's commitment to a continued and friendly engagement with Libya, and its President Muammar Gadaffi. By the same token, these latest developments underline the bankruptcy of the politics of confrontation, blockading and demonisation that successive US administrations have directed against Libya, and, selectively, against other Third World countries as well.
For more than a decade, US policy on Libya has been less about Lockerbie, and more about seeking to intimidate and bring to heel a Third World country that has, thanks partly to its oil resources, the capacity and will to resist total US domination. It is the same policy package that is directed at Cuba, Iraq, and now Yugoslavia.
The immediate developments around the Lockerbie case underline the importance of negotiations, and of working constructively within the framework of UN Resolutions and UN structures.
Issued by the SACP Department of Information & Publicity
E-Mail: sacp1@wn.apc.org
South African Communist Party Head Office
COSATU House
No. 1 Leyds Street - 7th Floor
Braamfontein 2001
Republic of South Africa
(Tel: 27 11 339-3621/2)
(Fax: 27 11 339-4244)