Arab World Reacts Cautiously to US New Ambassador to Libya | Voice of America - English
The U.S. Senate approved the nomination of a new U.S. ambassador to Libya late Thursday, making it the first time in 36 years that the United States will have an ambassador in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Putting a U.S. ambassador in Libya marks the culmination of a long road towards diplomatic normalcy between the two nations, as Edward Yeranian reports from Cairo.The Senate's confirmation of career diplomat Gene Cretz as the new U.S.
The Senate's confirmation of career diplomat GeneCretz as the new U.S. ambassador to Libya culminates a long process ofhealing and a rapprochement between two nations. Here in theArab world, many observers are watching the re-establishment ofdiplomatic relations between the United States and Libya, followed bythe Senate approval of a new ambassador to Tripoli-the first in 36years with caution and mixed feelings. Hisham Youssef, whoheads the Cabinet of Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, saysthat the League is pleased by the improving relations between theUnited States and Libya. "We welcome advancing relations betweenLibya and the United States and on the basis of agreements that theyhave had in the last several months and advancing the relations issomething that we look at in a very positive and constructive way," hesaid. Youssef is, nevertheless, a bit skeptical about theimportance of the U.S. move to confirm Cretz, due to a backdrop oftense relations between the outgoing Bush administration and the Arabworld, in general. "Well, improving relations with the whole ofthe Arab world requires much more than having an ambassador in Libyaand this is why people are looking forward to the policies that will beadopted by the new [Obama] administration," he said. Somecritics of the move in the Arab world, like political analyst andcolumnist for Beirut's  newspaper Rami Khouri, also thinkthat the Bush administration is improving relations with Libya for allthe wrong reasons. "I'm a little bit cynical about it," he said."I think this deal that the Libyans and the Americans and the West madestrikes me as incomplete because they gave up their nuclear industry inreturn for having normal relations. They paid a lot of money tocompensate families of the victims of the bombings." "But,Libya is still an autocratic place which is very tightly run and theWest is very happy to have relations with it and make money from oiland contracts and stuff like that. So, I'm a bit critical of how theWest would completely ignore the internal conditions and the nature ofthe regime, especially a regime that talks about promoting freedom anddemocracy as Bush has been. To do this kind of deal strikes me asmaterialistic expediency at its worst," he added. Libyan leader,Colonel Moammar Gadhafi began to improve ties with Washington in 2003after renouncing terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Thatprocess came to a head this year, after Libya agreed on a plan tocompensate families of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 overLockerbie, Scotland and the 1986 bombing of the Berlin discoteque, LaBelle, in which two US serviceman were killed, and dozens wounded. Secretaryof State Condoleezza Rice met with Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of theLibyan leader, Thursday, on the heels of the Senate approval of Cretz.