WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (AFP) - The United States on Tuesday welcomed news that Germany and Libya have reached an agreement on compensating scores of non-US nationals wounded in the deadly 1986 bombing of a Berlin nightclub 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.
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 families of the US soldiers have sued Libya for damages and are currently in discussion with Tripoli over compensation, Ereli noted.
Berlin and Libya's ambassador to Germany said earlier Tuesday that an agreement had been reached to pay 35 million dollars (28.4 million euros) to 168 mainly-German survivors of the attack and to the family of the Turkish woman.
A lawyer for the victims, Stephane Maigne, told AFP 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, he 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 incident at La Belle had remained an obstacle.
Immediately after the bombing, former US president Ronald Reagan blamed Libya, which has never accepted blame for the attack, and retaliated by ordering airstrikes on its capital in which Kadhafi's adopted daughter was killed.
In 2001, a German court sentenced four people to up to 14 years in prison and confirmed that Libya was partially responsible for the La Belle blast. Those findings were reaffirmed by a tribunal in Berlin in June, some 18 years after the bombing.