Senators urge Negroponte to get tough with Libya (Reuters)

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Senators urge Negroponte to get tough with Libya

By Sue Pleming
2 hours, 25 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. senators on Wednesday urged the
No. 2 State Department official to hold Libyan leader Muammar
Gaddafi accountable for "acts of terrorism" when the U.S. diplomat
visits Tripoli in coming days.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte is due to visit Tripoli
in the coming week -- the highest-ranking U.S. diplomat to do so
in decades -- as part of an African mission from April 11-19 to
discuss Sudan's western Darfur region.

"We urge you to use the opportunity your visit presents to send a
strong message to Libya's President Gaddafi that he must settle
the remaining terrorism cases against his country before he can
have fully normalized diplomatic relations with the United States,"
the seven U.S. senators said in a letter to Negroponte.

The senators, among them Democratic presidential candidate Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Republican Sen. Norm
Coleman of Minnesota, were referring to unresolved compensation
for U.S. relatives of victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103
over Lockerbie, Scotland, and a 1986 disco bombing in Berlin,
which killed two Americans.

-snip-

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070411/pl_nm/libya_usa_negroponte_dc_1

[Rick Myers]

1. Yeah! Get some death squads workin' over there!!!

Kaddaffi Duck won't know what him him!

on edit: The Salvador Option!

:sarcasm:

[Lint Head]

2. Muammar bought his way out of blowing up a Pan Am jet

over Scotland. I guess Bin Laden will buy his way out. That's how the corporate pricks that run our country and the world work. Money talks. This is true pornography. :dem:

[Warren Stupidity]

3. Hello? We already cut a deal with Libya.

That is done. Currently they are either on our side or in a neutral corner. Why other than pandering for votes would anyone want to stir up more shit in the muslim world?

[asjr]

4. "Deputy" Sec. of State?

Has Condi finally been put out to pasture?

[LibertyorDeath]

5. Negroponte should be deported to Central America

To stand trial for crimes against humanity.

Then on to Iraq for the same.

Then to the World Court.

Death squad John has a lot to answer for




Substantial evidence subsequently emerged to support the contention that Negroponte was aware that serious violations of human rights were carried out by the Honduran government, but despite this did not recommend ending U.S. military aid to the country. Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, on September 14, 2001, as reported in the Congressional Record, aired his suspicions on the occasion of Negroponte's nomination to the position of UN ambassador:

Based upon the Committee's review of State Department and CIA documents, it would seem that Ambassador Negroponte knew far more about government perpetrated human rights abuses than he chose to share with the committee in 1989 or in Embassy contributions at the time to annual State Department Human Rights reports.<2>

Among other evidence, Dodd cited a cable sent by Negroponte, in 1985, that made it clear that Negroponte was aware of the threat of "future human rights abuses" by "secret operating cells" left over by General Gustavo Álvarez Martinez, the chief of the Honduran armed forces, after he was forcibly removed from his post by fellow military commanders in 1984.

In April 2005, as the Senate confirmation hearings for the National Intelligence post took place, hundreds of documents were released by the State Department in response to a FOIA request by The Washington Post. The documents, cables that Negroponte sent to Washington while serving as ambassador to Honduras, indicated that he played a more active role than previously known in managing US efforts against the leftist Sandinistas. According to the Post, the image of Negroponte that emerges from the cables is that of an

exceptionally energetic, action-oriented ambassador whose anti-communist convictions led him to play down human rights abuses in Honduras, the most reliable U.S. ally in the region. There is little in the documents the State Department has released so far to support his assertion that he used "quiet diplomacy" to persuade the Honduran authorities to investigate the most egregious violations, including the mysterious disappearance of dozens of government opponents.<3>


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte