European Company Close to Reaching Libyan Arms Deal

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

PARIS, Aug. 3 — European Aeronautic Defense and Space, Europe’s largest aerospace company, confirmed Friday that it was close to signing two weapons contracts with the government of Libya. It would be the first arms deal with the North African country since the European Union lifted military sanctions on it nearly three years ago.

The progress on contracts with the company, which is under French and German management, worth $405 million by some accounts, comes just a week after President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and his wife, Cécilia, helped secure the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who had spent more than eight years in prison after being accused of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with H.I.V.

The case had long strained Libya’s relations with the European Union. But the French government denied Friday that any direct bargain for weapons contracts had been made with Libya for the medical workers’ freedom.

The French defense minister, Hervé Morin, said on RTL radio that the deals had been cleared by a French ministerial commission on weapons sales in February, well before Mr. Sarkozy succeeded Jacques Chirac as president in May.

But undercutting French officials, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, disclosed the contracts in an interview in Le Monde. He said that during a recent visit by Mr. Sarkozy, the Libyans asked him to “accelerate things.”