Libya rejects deadline on Lockerbie suspects

Libya yesterday officially rejected a Western deadline for it to hand over the suspects in the Lockerbie bombing to the US or Britain by 1 October, Reuter reports from Tunis.

The first official reaction came in a Foreign Ministry statement carried by the Libyan news agency JANA. 'It is astonishing that the three Western states in their statement . . . set a deadline of weeks to solve a problem of such scale which took . . . several years of investigations and inquiries,' the statement said. The US, France and Britain said on Friday Libya would face further sanctions if it did not hand over the alleged agents suspected in the 1988 Pan Am airliner bombing. All 259 people aboard the plane and 11 on the ground where killed when it exploded.