by Lorne Cook
BERLIN, Aug 10 (AFP) - Germany and Libya have reached an agreement on compensating scores of people wounded in the deadly 1986 bombing of a Berlin nightclub, the government here and Libya`s ambassador confirmed Tuesday.
Libya`s ambassador, Said Abdulaati, told AFP that Tripoli had agreed to pay a total of 35 million dollars (28.4 million euros) to non-US nationals who were hurt and said a letter of intent would be signed later Tuesday.
"The accord will be signed this evening," he said. An official ceremony will be held in the Libyan capital on September 3.
The bombing at the "La Belle" discotheque, which was frequented by US servicemen, in then West Berlin killed two GIs and a Turkish woman and wounded more than 250 people.
The German government confirmed the news and welcomed a deal that is seen as vital to restoring Libya`s international legitimacy.
"Germany favours in agreement with its European partners a new quality in relations between the European Union and Libya," it said in a statement.
"With the agreement that has been reached, nothing more stands in the way of an early visit to Libya by the federal chancellor" Gerhard Schroeder, it said.
Tripoli has reached compensation agreements with the families of victims of airliners blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 and Niger in 1989.
Those accords, along with leader Moamar Kadhafi`s announcement in December that he would renounce weapons of mass destruction, have helped Libya overcome its isolation as a pariah state. But La Belle has remained an obstacle.
A lawyer for the civil plaintiffs, Stephane Maigne, told AFP that compensation would be paid to 168 mainly-German survivors of the attack and to the family of the Turkish woman who died.
He said that 350,000 dollars would be paid to 11 people who were badly wounded and 188,000 dollars to 157 who received lesser injuries. The family of the Turkish woman would receive one million dollars, Maigne said.
A further 700,000 dollars would be used to compensate the disco owners.
The director of the Kadhafi Foundation, chaired by the Libyan leader`s son Saif al-Islam and leading the talks, said that the 35 million dollars would be paid in three lots over six months.
The United States welcomed Tuesday`s announcement but reminded Tripoli that the families of the two American victims should receive compensation as well.
"Obviously, we would view it as a welcome step but we would also want to take the opportunity to reiterate our view that it is important that efforts are also made to resolve the claims of the American victims as well," deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said.
"We`ve made it clear to the Libyans in numerous meetings ... that this is an issue of importance to us, and we are following it closely, and we think it needs to be resolved," he told reporters.
Immediately after the bombing in Berlin, former US president Ronald Reagan accused Libya, which has never accepted blame, and retaliated by ordering airstrikes on its capital.
In 2001, a German court sentenced four people to up to 14 years in prison and confirmed that Libya was partially responsible. Those findings were reaffirmed by a tribunal in Berlin in June, some 18 years after the bombing.
The principal suspect, Verena Chanaa, a German woman who married a Palestinian, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for murder and attempted murder. The prosecution said she carried the bomb into the discotheque in a handbag.
Yassir Shraidi, another Palestinian who was said to have assembled the explosive device, was also sentenced to 14 years in prison, as an accessory to murder and attempted murder.
A former Libyan agent Musbah Eter and Ali Chanaa, the Palestinian ex-husband of Verena Chanaa, were each sentenced to 12 years each on the same charges.
A fifth defendant, Andrea Haeussler, the sister of Verena Chanaa who accompanied her to the discotheque that night, was acquitted at the end of the four-year trial.